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Goodbye Jesus

"God" IS the author of confusion!


Checkmate

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A masters from Harvard in New Testament studies.

 

And you believe in Satan.

 

Hmmm. :scratch:

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Have you ever considered that since there were multiple authors of our Pentateuch, perhaps not all of them were working for the Lord when they wrote?  A lot of the evil allegedly wrought by God in the Torah is a product of the J-source.  Don't you suppose it's possible that Satan was using that person to inject evil into the text, so that people would one day question the morality and the goodness of Yahweh because of the things that were written about him?  And who knows what was added when the text was redacted and compiled in the 7th – 6th centuries B.C.  I can't think of a better way for Satan to lead people astray than to get his fingers into the text.  And there have been enough evil men involved with the transcription and editing over the years that Satan has had more than enough opportunities to tamper with the Word.

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And you don't think that a similar thing could have happened with the NT? That the Devil managed to sneak in wrong and misleading passages into the Gospels and the letters?

 

--edit--

 

Sorry, it looks like one of your other responses kind of admitted that.

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And you don't think that a similar thing could have happened with the NT? That the Devil managed to sneak in wrong and misleading passages into the Gospels and the letters?

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THAT'S IT! The whole salvation by grace thing. It's satan, I tell ya. Trying to trick everyone into believing they are saved.

 

All God wanted was for us to be good. (oh, and give 10%)

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Yes, and that's a very good point.  It is my belief that the gospel of John is essentially 100% fiction.

99436[/snapback]

And the others are what, 75% fiction?

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And the others are what, 75% fiction?

99473[/snapback]

 

No I believe that Mark is essentially a pure gospel. I also believe that the parts of Matthew and Luke that used Mark and Q as sources are also basically pure.

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THAT'S IT!  The whole salvation by grace thing.  It's satan, I tell ya.  Trying to trick everyone into believing they are saved.

 

All God wanted was for us to be good.  (oh, and give 10%)

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No, I believe that Satan has inserted his evil into parts of the Old Testament. Salvation by grace was a New Testament concept. One that I don't agree with actually. Yahweh is all about works, and I'm a Yahweh kind of man.

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No, I believe that Satan has inserted his evil into parts of the Old Testament.  Salvation by grace was a New Testament concept.  One that I don't agree with actually.  Yahweh is all about works, and I'm a Yahweh kind of man.

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:eek:

"Satan" has inserted HIS evil parts into the OT? Sounds like the same arguments claiming that "Satan" forsaw "god's" plans for "Jesus" and created false "savior gods" to precede "Jesus" to confuse man. Completely moronic.

 

A "Yahweh kind of man"? Oh yeah. Supporting THAT monster of a god will win you MANY friends on THIS site. :lmao:

 

This is a joke again, right? Who's yanking our chain THIS week? "A masters degree from HARVARD" and he believes in "Satan" as a "person"? He prefers Yahweh's laws over the "gospel of grace"? He also believes in MANY ways other than "Jesus"?

 

Add all that to his cut and paste approach to scriptural acceptance, and I become VERY skeptical.

 

Sounds even more confused than most. I'm done with this "Abram" character. He can't be legit. (And if "he" is, then I pity him.)

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Yes, and that's a very good point.  It is my belief that the gospel of John is essentially 100% fiction.

99436[/snapback]

 

:grin: Hello Abram!

 

Welcome to these forums! Your insights are an interesting perspective to me, fwiw.

 

May I ask you why you believe that the gospel of John is all fiction?

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:grin: Hello Abram!

 

Welcome to these forums! Your insights are an interesting perspective to me, fwiw.

 

May I ask you why you believe that the gospel of John is all fiction?

99505[/snapback]

 

Guessing it has to do with evolution of writing. John is significantly more fleshed out than the other 3. Mathew and Luke reference Mark and Q..so the significant additions to John are probably pure invention. My guess.

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THAT'S IT!  The whole salvation by grace thing.  It's satan, I tell ya.  Trying to trick everyone into believing they are saved.

 

All God wanted was for us to be good.  (oh, and give 10%)

99467[/snapback]

 

Religion is the most evil, the most destructive, the most tyrannical, the most disruptive, the most corruptive, the most seductive, the most injurious, the most ignorant, the most deceptive and the most useless concept ever conceived on this planet of our mother earth. Religion is a black hole devouring and eating the very heart and soul of mankind and his attempt to become civilized.

 

        Even if there were a god, no good god could condone the use of such knowledge as that to destroy the civilizations, characters and lives of others. No good god could institute a religion which seduces the creativity of mankind and turns that creativity into killing and hating machines. No good god would command or condone genocide, murder, torture, starvation, cruelty, hatred, ignorance, deceptions, lies, theft of power, theft from the common treasury, destruction of nature's bounty, over population, cruel and unusual punishments, racism, elitism, censorship, prohibitions, manipulations of wealth, manipulation of history and facts, manipulation of knowledge and the manipulation of such an evil concept as religion. No good god would call GOOD evil and such EVIL as good.

 

        If there were a devil the first thing I would expect him (her or it) to do would be to manufacture several different religions and claim that each one of them was the one and only divine and true religion and that all other religions must be destroyed or made subservient to the one and only true divine religion - yours.

 

 

http://www.jovialatheist.com/weaponsofwar.html

 

I love that site! Reading about the history of the Constantine Bible we have today. The above was a few pages back, about war.

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No, I believe that Satan has inserted his evil into parts of the Old Testament.  Salvation by grace was a New Testament concept.  One that I don't agree with actually.  Yahweh is all about works, and I'm a Yahweh kind of man.

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Even before the Council of 325 AD, leaders of "The Way" were envious of the Cross used by the Mithraic church because it indicated a physical life for Mithra, their Jesus (Savior). The Mithraic religion worshiped Mithra, their Persian crucified Jesus Christ (Savior Anointed). Their Jesus Christ (Mithra) was claimed to have physically died on a "Cross" in the old Persian method of execution several hundred years before the Jewish Jesus Christ (Savior Anointed) was later claimed to be executed in the Roman method of execution. The Romans executed their victims by "poling" (impaling).

 

          Constantine was a worshiper of Sol Invictus, Apollo/Mithra being their Savior Anointed (their Jesus Christ). He wanted to combine all the saviors to make One Soul Saving Savior (one Jesus) and make him into a Christ God Man (a Christ or Savior like Apollo or Mithra). In fact, he wanted to name the new savior, Apollo and worship him as The God (The Deity) to give status to his New Church. This New Church would then mesh with his own religion and become one with it.

 

          To deify someone was a legal process and was not difficult for a king or emperor. Constantine had his subjects call him “Son of God” because he had recently deified his own father and expected the same to be done for himself. Thereafter, “Son of God” was added to the titles of Constantine. So, he summoned the leaders of the church called "The Way" and the church called Mithraic (or Christian) along with other scattered sects and churches that worshiped a Savior Anointed (a Jesus Christ). He was going to choose, or create, a savior (a Jesus), settle this question of the divinity of the savior once and for all time and build a strong single State Church.

 

          Constantine began immediately to lay the groundwork for his New State Church. In 321 AD, he enacted the Edict of Tolerance. This gave Christians (Mithraic, The Way, Sol Invictus and other Savior worshipers) new freedom. In addition, he declared that all businesses, courts, shops, transactions and entertainments were to be closed on Sun-day in honor of the Sun God (Apollo and/or Mithra, the saviors anointed). All Savior Gods were to be worshiped on that day. He also declared that all Savior Gods’ birthdays (including Mithra, the Jewish Savior and Apollo) were to be celebrated on the third day after the winter solstice. That is when the Sun begins to return north (by our calendar, December 24th - 25th). This is the first day astronomers can observe the return north of the sun. All of the Gods were to be celebrated at that time with festivals and worship.

 

 

I used to think the NT was just an extention of the OT, I never realized they stole from the OT as well as Mithraism and Sun worship.

 

http://www.jovialatheist.com/biblehistory.html

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:grin: Hello Abram!

 

Welcome to these forums! Your insights are an interesting perspective to me, fwiw.

 

May I ask you why you believe that the gospel of John is all fiction?

99505[/snapback]

 

That would also clearly make Revelation bunk too, eh?

 

If you took out all the supposed prophesy, miracles and other fantastic claims, you'd have this left:

 

In the Beginning

 

The end.

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http://www.jovialatheist.com/weaponsofwar.html

 

I love that site!  Reading about the history of the Constantine Bible we have today.  The above was a few pages back, about war.

99540[/snapback]

 

 

If I may suggest something. Abram is really not the kind of Christian you want to be using unreferenced rubbish on, as he's already shown. I'm agnostic, and sites like that, like Achyara S. and Kersey Graves really piss me off. There is a case against Christ, but they don't have it.

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You'd be surprised, the book is actually quite a bit more enlightening when you throw away the wars, the rape, and the killing. 

The asshole that raped me was a really nice guy, if you throw away well, the rape, the pedophily and the general assHoliness.

Your argument doesn't hold water. A rapist is a rapist, I don't care if he's also a chess master when he's not raping anyone. A book of hatred, rape, killing and wars is just that, even if every now and then it says something about love. Sorry.

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:grin: Hello Abram!

 

Welcome to these forums! Your insights are an interesting perspective to me, fwiw.

 

May I ask you why you believe that the gospel of John is all fiction?

99505[/snapback]

 

Hello Amanda. Basically, there does not seem to be any compelling evidence to date the gospel of John to the first century A.D. I am a believer in Markan priority, and the gospel of Q, mainly because I have studied the texts in NT Greek...and frankly I don't really have any other choice. They simply cannot be four separate eyewitness accounts, not when you look at the huge amount of copy/pasting of Greek text that went on from Mark to Matthew and Luke. This isn’t quite as apparent in our English translations, for reasons which I’m sure you can guess.

 

The synoptic problem is very real, and very serious. I believe Mark wrote first, perhaps ca. 65-80 A.D. Then Luke and Matthew wrote next, and John came last. Fragment P52 tells us that the Gospel of John existed, at least in some form as early as ca. 120-160 A.D. But early attestation for John is quite poor. In his epistle to the Philippians ca. 155 A.D., Polycarp makes a very passing, indirect reference to the first epistle of John, but not the gospel of John. (I John 4.2-3. He says "to deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is to be Antichrist.") Unfortunately he does not reference the epistle explicity, and the Marcionite Heresy (which denied Christ's resurrection in the flesh) was going on at this time, so for all we know he wasn't even quoting John but rather using a fairly generic slogan to combat the heresy. But Justin Martyr makes slightly more definite references to John's gospel ca. 155-162 A.D.

 

So between Polycarp and Justin, and P52, we can probably set the upper bound for the composition of John at ca. 150-160 A.D. Evangelical scholars (and my dear, believe me they are not scholars; scholar's treat their sources critically) argue for a date of 85 A.D., while more liberal scholars like Baur argue for 160 A.D. The middle of the road scholars go for more like ca. 100 A.D. So even if we go for the middle of the road 100 A.D., which frankly is still very much towards the early end of the spectrum, then we are looking at a gospel writer who would have to be at least 90 years old or so if they had been a 20 year old adult witness to the miracles of Jesus Christ. I'm not willing to stretch reality quite that far, so I don’t' believe an eyewitness wrote John. And John is not considered a synoptic gospel because frankly, his gospel doesn't much line up with Mark, Matthew, and Luke. And he seems to bring in some Hellenistic Alexandrian ideas like the logos. For those reasons, I tend to think it is a work of pious fiction. Much like the other fictional accounts in the gospel of Truth, the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Philip, the gospel of Mary, etc. People were fascinated about our Lord. They wanted to know more about him. What was life like for him when he was a young boy, was he always perfect or did he become perfect? Etc. And so our scribes wrote fictional accounts to answer these and many other questions. I think John was the first of these.

 

I place much more of my trust in Mark, and a bit more in Matthew and Luke.

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The asshole that raped me was a really nice guy, if you throw away well, the rape, the pedophily and the general assHoliness.

Your argument doesn't hold water. A rapist is a rapist, I don't care if he's also a chess master when he's not raping anyone. A book of hatred, rape, killing and wars is just that, even if every now and then it says something about love. Sorry.

99548[/snapback]

 

At least Abram is polite, wipe that foam off your mouth. I happen to agree with him, and I've been saying it for years, why don't we throw out all of the corrupt garbage in the Bible and cultivate the few useful tidbits.

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The asshole that raped me was a really nice guy, if you throw away well, the rape, the pedophily and the general assHoliness.

Your argument doesn't hold water. A rapist is a rapist, I don't care if he's also a chess master when he's not raping anyone. A book of hatred, rape, killing and wars is just that, even if every now and then it says something about love. Sorry.

99548[/snapback]

 

It is not an argument Asuryan, I am merely sharing my worldview. I do not for you or anyone else to adopt it. The gospel of Mark originally ended at 16:8 (as the early codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus testify) so I don't believe the Lord wanted us to "preach the glad tidings to all the creation." (16.15) Nor do I believe that "he that believes and is baptized shall be saved, and he that disbelieves shall be condemned." (16.16-17) Condemning people for being skeptical is not a trait that I think is worthy of an all loving God, I think that sometime during the 2nd century, the various longer endings of Mark were inserted to encourage the laymen to missionize and make life easy for the bishops.

 

I don't believe Jesus was a very wise, loving being. And I can’t imagine that he would reserve his love for only those of us who believe in him. After all, many of those who don’t believe do so because they recognize that many, many, many problems exist in our Bible. How can God punish them for recognizing that and (probably rightly) being skeptical because of it?

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Errr....MAJOR CORRECTION:

I believe Jesus was a very wise, loving being.

99565[/snapback]

 

Oh, and here we were agreeing with your first assessment. LOL

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It is not an argument Asuryan, I am merely sharing my worldview.  I do not for you or anyone else to adopt it. 

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But you are here, on an exchristian forum, and you said at least once that you are here because god wants you to. Why does he want you to stay here and talk about christianity to ex christians? What does he wish to accomplish by this?

 

However, I'll gladly admit that you are a cultured person and you seem on a completely different level than pug or daniel or spirit1st or other, mostly emotional, christians.

That is why I think you should go away from the Lion's Den, and get inside the Arena. A serious debate with one of our most cultured skeptics, following very precise rules of debating, seems like something that you could handle pretty fine.

I am really looking forward to it. :dance:

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Have you ever considered that since there were multiple authors of our Pentateuch, perhaps not all of them were working for the Lord when they wrote?  A lot of the evil allegedly wrought by God in the Torah is a product of the J-source.  Don't you suppose it's possible that Satan was using that person to inject evil into the text, so that people would one day question the morality and the goodness of Yahweh because of the things that were written about him? 

99392[/snapback]

 

What a convenient belief system you have, Abram. Take all of the parts of the bible you don't like - the parts that violate your ideas about God - and attribute those parts to Satan.

 

Well, hell. I guess I do the same thing, though. I reject all parts of the bible that I think emanated from the minds of foolish, manipulative men.

 

Oh yeah. That's right. That would be all of it.

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Well, I think it's mostly ALL Satan. God was the one who told Eve about the tree, God was the one who clothed them. God gave up after that and went to create another world somewhere else in the universe. Satan took care of the rest.

 

God knows we won't believe any of that crap, that's why he gave us the brains and experiences he did. Those still under the influence of Satan believe everything from God is from Satan, and everything from Satan is from God.

 

I see them like having a party on an Amtrak train heading for the west coast. They're whooping it up, saying everyone who's not on board this train is going to die and go to hell. They don't know the bridge over the a ravine half way down the track has collapsed.

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What a convenient belief system you have, Abram.  Take all of the parts of the bible you don't like - the parts that violate your ideas about God - and attribute those parts to Satan.

99729[/snapback]

 

My guess is this won't be an uncommon position in the future. That's not to say it's a rational one, but I think that's where they are headed. More and more the OT is being marginalized by modern scholarship. Abram shows us why the exodus likely never happened. So it's only a matter of time before Christians wash their hands of it.

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However, I'll gladly admit that you are a cultured person and you seem on a completely different level than pug or daniel or spirit1st or other, mostly emotional, christians.

He most definitely is, and with some new and different ideas too.

 

That is why I think you should go away from the Lion's Den, and get inside the Arena. A serious debate with one of our most cultured skeptics, following very precise rules of debating, seems like something that you could handle pretty fine.

I am really looking forward to it.  :dance:

99611[/snapback]

I think the other areas are locked until you register. He can only participate in the Lion's Den as an anonymous guest.

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So..."Abram" is Rameus, huh? I knew he wasn't real. As I said last night...

...................

This is a joke again, right?  Who's yanking our chain THIS week? 

...................

Sounds even more confused than most.  I'm done with this "Abram" character.  He can't be legit.  (And if "he" is, then I pity him.)

99493[/snapback]

Score one for the Grinch.

 

 

 

Well played, Sir Rameus! :grin:

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