My story of the Super-Human, from approx. 33 A.D.

[beachguy in thongs]

When they hung this man from a cross, not like those of other hangings, his brain-cells (courtesy of the cannabis he's smoked on his journeys) shut down and gave the appearance of death (common in severe trauma).

It took him three days, with no physical strength, to move the boulder from the cave's entrance. He then went on to become the Main Character in Ayn Rand novels, such as "Anthem", and Canadian Rock-group Albums, such as "2112".

[eg420ne]

:smokin: What u smokin? share with the rest of us....

[beachguy in thongs]

:smokin: What u smokin? share with the rest of us....
Thanks. I appreciated that. :stoned:

[F L E S H]

"The only true Christian died on a cross."

[beachguy in thongs]

# Multiple eyewitness accounts - different people, different times, different situations, all seeing the resurrected Jesus, eating with him, talking with him.
# Eyewitnesses who were willing to suffer and die for their testimonies, which ends any chance of false motives for their testimonies.
# Conservative Bible scholars argue that the resurrection shows indications of being physical/historical event.
# The Gospels state that the early witnesses to the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus were women, whose testimony was not regarded as credible in the patriarchal Judaism of that period.
# Various arguments having been put forth by legal scholars such as Simon Greenleaf and John Warwick Montgomery and others claiming that Western legal standards argue for the historicity of the resurrection of Christ.
# Lack of protests against the empty tomb which is admitedly a appeal to silence. There is no record of the Jewish and Roman authorities disproving the belief by publicly presenting the real corpse of Jesus.
# Bible scholar Dr. Gary Habermas argues that there are eight pieces of evidence showing that 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 which proclaims Jesus's death and resurrection was a early creed of the Christian church [http://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent=/articles/historical_apologetics/gentile-resurrection.html]
# Bible scholar FF Bruce states that the presence of hostile witnesses during the time of early Christianity served as a historical check that lends further credence to the historicity of Christianity.http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html
# Who could find a whole group of people willing to concoct a wild lie, be tortured and killed for it, and not have one of them tell the truth to escape death? Charles Colson argues in his book Loving God that as a former Watergate conspirator he believes that conspiracies are hard to maintain especially in the face of persecution and argues that Apostles were telling the truth regarding the resurrection of Jesus.
# The morality of Jesus and his disciples. Historian William Lecky stated, "He [Jesus]...has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice." It is unclear, however, how this is relevant to the question of Jesus' resurrection, save as a response to the claim that the Apostles lied.
# # The relatively poor educational level of the disciples (most were fishermen), which would make the devising of an elaborate cover-up difficult.
# The radical change of Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul.
# The birth and rapid spread of the early church, all from people who were originally hiding in fear.
# The Bible says that over 500 people were witnesses of the resurrected Jesus, many still alive at the time. This open declaration was in the face of non-Christians who could respond to the charge. To be fair, this is an argument from silence.
# The Jewish Scriptures contain many statements that Christians have interpreted as saying that God would take a body, die for sins and rise again.
# The early dates for most of the New Testament.
# The testimony of the early church fathers regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Christ - some of whom were martyred for their faith and claim to have met or been disciples of the Apostles.
# Jesus fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies (see: Bible prophecy). The probability of the fulfillment of all of them by chance is presumed to be extremely small and best accounted for as a miracle. http://www.messianic-prophecy.net/ http://www.geocities.com/stonerdon/science_speaks.html#c9 This ought to prompt us to take more seriously the possibility of a second miracle, the resurrection.
# # The experiences of millions of Christians worldwide today, who claim to have met Jesus personally and experience the Spirit which he promised would come.
# Negative accounts of Jesus' disciples in the New Testament resurrection stories. Jesus' disciples became the leaders of Christianity after Jesus' death, and yet the resurrection stories speak poorly of their belief and understanding when Jesus met with them after rising. If the stories were concocted, why would they include such negative portrayals of themselves?
# The uniqueness of the New Testament descriptions of the resurrection as thoroughly bodily and physical. Most, if not all, resurrection stories of antiquity emphasize the immortality of their hero's soul. This is indicative of a general philosophical culture that looked harshly on physicality and emphasized the value of the soul/spirit over body.
# A general acceptance by a majority of biblical scholars and historians that Jesus' disciples at least thought they met Jesus after he died (although scholars still disagree as to if they actually saw a physical Jesus, a poser, a vision, or "something" else).
# # The early 19th century British historian and churchman Thomas Arnold believed the resurrection of Jesus did occur and it that it was "proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort" to the "fair inquirer".http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html
# In regards to the historicity of the resurrection, the historian A. N. Sherwin-White stated that "Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, [showing that] even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core".
# According to the book of Acts Jesus showed himself to the Apostles with many "infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3) and the book of Acts also gives an account of post resurrection appearance with Jesus speaking to the Apostles in the opening chapter.
# Using the work of the University of Dublin physiologist Samuel Houghton, M.D., Bible commentator Frederick Charles Cook and author Josh McDowell argue that the crucifixion narrative in the gospel of John could never have been invented as it displays medical knowledge not available at the time.
# Bible commentators John Wenham, Dr. Gleason Archer and others have offered exegesis of the Biblical text in respect to the gospels arguing among other things that omissions are not contradictions and that alleged contradictions are often due to poor Bible exegesis/cultural differences (culteral context).
# Roman guards are punishable by death if ever they allow a crucified man to live. The Roman guards even pierced Jesus on the side with a spear; his body bled and released water, a sign of death from asphyxia.
# Roman guards are also punishable by death if they allow a condemned man's remains be stolen, especially because of the importance of Jesus.
# In Matthew 28:11-15, there is a reference made to an attempt to refute Christianity be saying that the disciples stole the body. Christians believe there are a number of problems with the stolen body hypothesis.http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/resurrec.html[http://answering-islam.org.uk/Case/case4.html]http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/res3.html
# The Toledoth Yeshu a compilation of early Jewish writings, is another source which alludes to stolen body hypothesis. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/res3.html
# J.N.D. Anderson, dean of the faculty of law at the University of London, and director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the same university said, "This [the stolen body theory] would run totally contrary to all we know of them: their ethical teaching, the quality of their lives. Nor would it begin to explain their dramatic transformation from dejected and dispirited escapists into witnesses whom no opposition could muzzle." http://www.ldolphin.org/kellyd.html
# Some skeptics argue that no Roman historians mention any darkness of three hours at the time of Jesus' death. However, Bible scholar FF Bruce argues in his work, "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? that the Samaritan-born historian Thallus alludes to this darkness. Julius Africanus writes regarding Thallus: "Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun -unreasonably, as it seems to me" (unreasonably, of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died)".http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc10.htm Also, the lack of a Roman historian not mentioning the darkness is an appeal to silence and as noted earlier the historian Fischer states this is not a legitimate historical methodology.
# Some skeptics argue that the only early sources which mention the resurrection are Christian sources. However, Bible scholar, Dr. Gary Habermas writes in his work The Historical Jesus the following, "If this brief statement by Thallus refers to Jesus' crucifixion we can ascertain that the Christian gospel, or at least an account of the crucifixion, was known in the Mediterranean region by the middle of the first century AD."
# # In regards to early Christian witness, Christians argue that an â??agendaâ?� does not nullify the possibility of accurate historical knowledge. In the Dr. Norman Geisler-Farrell Till debate, Dr. Geisler gave a car accident analogy and stated "Now apart from your eyewitnesses, you don't have a very good case." That's like four eyewitnesses in court who saw an accident, and then one person came right after the accident, and the defense attorney said, "Now apart from those four eyewitnesses you just gave, you know you have only circumstantial evidence." So it's begging the question to say apart from the New Testament, and I gave the argument that the New Testament was historically reliable. http://media.isnet.org/antar/etc/Geisler-Till.html Furthermore, according to historian David Hackett Fischer the following principle is sound: "An historian must not merely provide good evidence, but the best evidence. And the best evidence, all other things being equal, is the evidence which is most nearly immediate to the event itself."
# The skeptic Dan Barker has argued that there is evidence of progressive supernaturalization in the gospel accounts. However, it has been argued that Mr. Barker's analysis of the gospels is flawed and inconsistent. http://www.tektonics.org/guest/barkblund.html In addition, as noted earlier the historian Fischer said appeals to silence are illegitimate in historical investigations.
# Some skeptics argue that in the appearances of Jesus that are reported to have occurred initially after he left the tomb, his followers did not immediately recognize him and this raises issues regarding the compellingness of Jesus's appearances. However, the gospels do appear to state that Christ sometimes supernaturally hid himself (Luke 4: 20-30, John 8:37-41,59). Also, there are indications that Christ's appearances had a supernatural element. Luke 24:31 states: "And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight." Bible commentator David Guzak states regarding this verse, "As soon as their eyes were opened to who Jesus was, He left miraculously...." http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/c/1124475356-3062.html This skeptical argument in relation to Jesus's appearances also ignores Acts 1:3 which states he appeared to the apostles with many "infallible proofs".
# Some skeptics claim that there are miraculous accounts of the bodily disappearance of pagan divine heroes and say that these accounts lack historical believability and argue that this is an argument against the resurrection of Christ. Christians say this is a faulty line of reasoning and argue merely because some accounts of miraculous bodily disappearance are false that does not mean at all that all miraculous disappearances are false. Historical claims are weighed and are not "added". In short, both miraculous and non miraculous accounts should not be casually thrown together by the historian. Similarly, conservative Christians argue that the arguments that Jesus was a "copy cat Christ" stolen from pagan myths are lacking in historical plausibility and poorly constructed.http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/copycathub.html.
# Occam's Razor: that Jesus really did rise and appear to his disciples is a very simple and complete explanation for the complex events that came later: the actions of the disciples, the unique rise of Christianity as a Jewish sect (many other would-be Messiahs and movements had appeared and quickly disappeared in 1st century Palestine), the continued significance of Christianity, etc. This is also known as the "smoke-and-fire" argument (Graham Stanton) - where there is smoke there is fire. The "smoke" of events that came after Jesus' life have to be in part explained by a genuine fire - the authenticity of Jesus as Messiah. Note: this point is not acceptable to those holding a materialist philosophical presupposition and therefore deny a priori the existence of miracles. In this case, supposing a miracle is actually complicating the argument by adding an obtuse variable.
Thanks for your time.

[beachguy in thongs]

I'm sorry for the crazy post.

All I got out of it is that He was present at "smoking sessions" after He was hanged.

[beachguy in thongs]

I posted this, eight days ago. It was 32 A.D. Thanks for correcting me, oh, great chronologer in the sky.

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

"The only true Christian died on a cross."truth be told :D



hat's not actually true though, every other true christian was pretty much absolutely unknown, and didnt even bother unlocking their own potential, likely even died young.


and jimmy hendrix.

[Oneironaut]

# Multiple eyewitness accounts - different people, different times, different situations, all seeing the resurrected Jesus, eating with him, talking with him.
Where? I haven't read any such eyewitness accounts.

# Eyewitnesses who were willing to suffer and die for their testimonies, which ends any chance of false motives for their testimonies.
By that logic, Islam is also true for the same reason, as are a plethora of other religions who have all had people willing to die for what was to them "eyewitness testimony" confirming their religion as truth.

# Conservative Bible scholars argue that the resurrection shows indications of being physical/historical event.
I'm not surprised that they would argue that, but what conclusive evidence do they have?

# The Gospels state that the early witnesses to the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus were women, whose testimony was not regarded as credible in the patriarchal Judaism of that period.
Funny the divine Jesus never abolished such sexism, or even spoke out against it. But that's no surprise really, since Christianity is mostly a mishmash of existing Jewish and Pagan beliefs.

# Various arguments having been put forth by legal scholars such as Simon Greenleaf and John Warwick Montgomery and others claiming that Western legal standards argue for the historicity of the resurrection of Christ.
Legal standards? What? How do they prove that a dead man came back to life through legal standards? In any case, I'm betting that they started out believing in the resurrection of Christ and worked backwards to confirm that conclusion. It hardly ever seems to be the other way around with these sorts of things.

# Lack of protests against the empty tomb which is admitedly a appeal to silence. There is no record of the Jewish and Roman authorities disproving the belief by publicly presenting the real corpse of Jesus.
So? Our government isnt clamoring to come up with evidence to disprove UFO conspiracy nuts or other fringe groups.

What evidence do we have that Jesus even existed? Really? What's the evidence? The absence of a corpse? Come on.

# Bible scholar Dr. Gary Habermas argues that there are eight pieces of evidence showing that 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 which proclaims Jesus's death and resurrection was a early creed of the Christian church [http://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent=/articles/historical_apologetics/gentile-resurrection.html]
So what? Belief in a resurrected godman had been commonplace long before the birth of Jesus. Try reading something by someone who doesn't start out with the intention to prove their preexisting beliefs: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/beginnings.html

# Bible scholar FF Bruce states that the presence of hostile witnesses during the time of early Christianity served as a historical check that lends further credence to the historicity of Christianity.http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html
Yet another Bible scholar. Find me something by a non-partisan source, please. The simple fact is, there is no evidence at all from any of Jesus' contemporaries that he even existed. Well, scratch that. Jesus was a pretty common name, and there were plenty of Jesuses recorded back then (http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm), but not one that fits the description of the "messiah". You'd think somebody who was performing divine miracles on a regular basis would have gotten a mention by some non-partisan source somewhere during his lifetime, no? How is it that with all his divine powers he didn't convert everybody around him, didn't dazzle them into believing in Christianity? How is it that he only died with a handful of followers who then split up into many warring factions? Come to think of it, why didn't he just use his divine powers to fly away from the people crucifying him? That would have convinced everybody there of his divinity, I'm sure, and he could go off preaching his message to the world (yes, even to the Native Americans that were apparently not deserving of Jesus' teachings until centuries later). Instead, the asshole decides to die and on top of that, make all subsequent generations of humanity pay for it! What did I do to deserve that? Sorry, that doesn't sound like a divine superhero to me.

# Who could find a whole group of people willing to concoct a wild lie, be tortured and killed for it, and not have one of them tell the truth to escape death?
Don't ask me why people die for absolute faith in absolutely ridiculous ideas. Just look at Heaven's Gate or 9/11. Those people's beliefs weren't confirmed by the fact that they were willing to die for them, and neither are the early Christians'.

Charles Colson argues in his book Loving God that as a former Watergate conspirator he believes that conspiracies are hard to maintain especially in the face of persecution and argues that Apostles were telling the truth regarding the resurrection of Jesus.
So why would knowledge of Jesus' divinity be restricted to these few apostles after his death? Why did he abandon the religion (by dying and not using his superpowers to escape it) to just a couple people who couldn't prove anything about anything?

If I were God and I wanted to send my son to preach an urgent message to humanity, I'd have found a more efficient way to do it. Make him fly around the world, immortal, performing David-Blaine-esque miracles everywhere. I wouldn't just send him to some remort corner of Israel with "miracles" only convincing enough to convert a handful of the locals (a tiny fraction of a percent of the Earth's population), to be killed after 3 decades and have his life chronicled a couple centuries later in a work riddled with contradictions and obviously fictional stories. Why didn't Jesus write his own book? Why do we have to hear everything from dubious second hand sources? You'd think a divine being would have left more evidence of himself if he really wanted everybody to believe in him.

# The morality of Jesus and his disciples. Historian William Lecky stated, "He [Jesus]...has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice." It is unclear, however, how this is relevant to the question of Jesus' resurrection, save as a response to the claim that the Apostles lied.
Lots of perfectly morally upright but self-deluded individuals have unknowingly spread lies, and many morally corrupt individuals have successfully put on a disguise of morality. Why should it have been any different 2,000 years ago?

# # The relatively poor educational level of the disciples (most were fishermen), which would make the devising of an elaborate cover-up difficult.
Do you think education was about teaching people to perform cover-ups back then? No, they usually studied classic literature and the like. Uneducated people can do cover-ups. Just look at the mafia. But it probably wasn't really a cover-up of deliberate lies anyways. More plausible is that Jesus was a mishmash of fictional and real stories that later got personified and mythologized.

# The radical change of Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul.
I have no idea what that is.

# The birth and rapid spread of the early church, all from people who were originally hiding in fear.
Well of course the early church spread. If it didn't it wouldn't be around today and we'd be talking about the origins of some other church. That doesn't prove that the church's beliefs are true.

# The Bible says that over 500 people were witnesses of the resurrected Jesus, many still alive at the time. This open declaration was in the face of non-Christians who could respond to the charge. To be fair, this is an argument from silence.
The Bible says lots of things. For instance, that the Sun once stopped in the sky for a couple days. That doesn't make it true.

# The Jewish Scriptures contain many statements that Christians have interpreted as saying that God would take a body, die for sins and rise again.
20/20 hindsight vision. I'm not impressed.

# The early dates for most of the New Testament.
What about them?

# The testimony of the early church fathers regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Christ - some of whom were martyred for their faith and claim to have met or been disciples of the Apostles.
So? People say Elvis didn't really die, but that doesn't mean he's really alive. Same goes for Jesus.

# Jesus fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies (see: Bible prophecy). The probability of the fulfillment of all of them by chance is presumed to be extremely small and best accounted for as a miracle.
Is presumed? Presumed by whom? Not by me. It seems much more plausible that the Jesus story was written to fit the prophecies as best as possible, not the other way around. You know, the same way Nostradamus freaks like to fit history into his prophecies, only the early Christians had more leeway since they were dealing with supernatural myths and not objective history.

http://www.messianic-prophecy.net/ http://www.geocities.com/stonerdon/science_speaks.html#c9 This ought to prompt us to take more seriously the possibility of a second miracle, the resurrection.
Second miracle? I haven't ever been shown that any miracles have happened anywhere at any time. If Jesus wanted me to believe in his miracles, he would come and perform some for me. But since he isn't doing that, I can only conclude that he doesn't care about people like me who are simply incapable of making themselves believe in things for which there is no evidence. And if that's the case, well I don't want to be worshipping anyone that inconsiderate anyways.

# # The experiences of millions of Christians worldwide today, who claim to have met Jesus personally and experience the Spirit which he promised would come.
But we can just throw out all the accounts of having met Mohammed or Vishnu or any of those other Gods of course. They don't count, because they don't agree with us.

blah blah blah...
I'm sorry, I can't deal with all these individually. I'm too lazy and I still don't see any conclusive evidence that Jesus even existed, much less that he was who Christians claim he was.

Let me get this straight. Here's a man who was sent to Earth 2,000 years ago to preach some message of peace (I guess God didn't care enough to send this message earlier), and yet despite being one with the omnipotent ruler of the universe didn't do anything worthy of mention by any of his non-partisan contemporaries and only managed to convince a tiny portion of the Earth's population that he was the real deal. Then, although he had all these miraculous superpowers, he could not defeat the Roman court system and its executioners. So he sacrificed himself to God (i.e. himself) and now he wants us all to pay for his sacrifice. I'm sorry, I've just never been able to understand how people swallow that.

[Faultydesign]

one thing...he didn't want to defeat the roman courts, and thus he didn't

[Oneironaut]

So Christians should stop saying Jesus was "killed for our sins". He committed suicide.

[Faultydesign]

He sacrificed himself. Which means he allowed himself to be killed for us.

If a grenade is thrown into a fox hole and a man jumps on it he commits sucide.

But it is sacrifice for the good of others.

[Oneironaut]

So...what good did his death do for anyone?

[beachguy in thongs]

It was so you can die a good death, I guess. Commit all the sins you wish, Jesus has already died for the Original one so you have nothing to worry about. But sinning to destroy others, whether it's destroying them materialistically or spiritually, is not allowable because it deters the evolution of the human race.

But smoke all the pot you want. That's why Jesus died.

The proceeding was a view of an independent party and not one that can be backed with the views or intentions of beachguy, inc.

[beachguy in thongs]

Where? I haven't read any such eyewitness accounts.

By that logic, Islam is also true for the same reason, as are a plethora of other religions who have all had people willing to die for what was to them "eyewitness testimony" confirming their religion as truth.

I'm not surprised that they would argue that, but what conclusive evidence do they have?

Funny the divine Jesus never abolished such sexism, or even spoke out against it. But that's no surprise really, since Christianity is mostly a mishmash of existing Jewish and Pagan beliefs.

Legal standards? What? How do they prove that a dead man came back to life through legal standards? In any case, I'm betting that they started out believing in the resurrection of Christ and worked backwards to confirm that conclusion. It hardly ever seems to be the other way around with these sorts of things.

So? Our government isnt clamoring to come up with evidence to disprove UFO conspiracy nuts or other fringe groups.

What evidence do we have that Jesus even existed? Really? What's the evidence? The absence of a corpse? Come on.

So what? Belief in a resurrected godman had been commonplace long before the birth of Jesus. Try reading something by someone who doesn't start out with the intention to prove their preexisting beliefs: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/beginnings.html

Yet another Bible scholar. Find me something by a non-partisan source, please. The simple fact is, there is no evidence at all from any of Jesus' contemporaries that he even existed. Well, scratch that. Jesus was a pretty common name, and there were plenty of Jesuses recorded back then (http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm), but not one that fits the description of the "messiah". You'd think somebody who was performing divine miracles on a regular basis would have gotten a mention by some non-partisan source somewhere during his lifetime, no? How is it that with all his divine powers he didn't convert everybody around him, didn't dazzle them into believing in Christianity? How is it that he only died with a handful of followers who then split up into many warring factions? Come to think of it, why didn't he just use his divine powers to fly away from the people crucifying him? That would have convinced everybody there of his divinity, I'm sure, and he could go off preaching his message to the world (yes, even to the Native Americans that were apparently not deserving of Jesus' teachings until centuries later). Instead, the asshole decides to die and on top of that, make all subsequent generations of humanity pay for it! What did I do to deserve that? Sorry, that doesn't sound like a divine superhero to me.

Don't ask me why people die for absolute faith in absolutely ridiculous ideas. Just look at Heaven's Gate or 9/11. Those people's beliefs weren't confirmed by the fact that they were willing to die for them, and neither are the early Christians'.

So why would knowledge of Jesus' divinity be restricted to these few apostles after his death? Why did he abandon the religion (by dying and not using his superpowers to escape it) to just a couple people who couldn't prove anything about anything?

If I were God and I wanted to send my son to preach an urgent message to humanity, I'd have found a more efficient way to do it. Make him fly around the world, immortal, performing David-Blaine-esque miracles everywhere. I wouldn't just send him to some remort corner of Israel with "miracles" only convincing enough to convert a handful of the locals (a tiny fraction of a percent of the Earth's population), to be killed after 3 decades and have his life chronicled a couple centuries later in a work riddled with contradictions and obviously fictional stories. Why didn't Jesus write his own book? Why do we have to hear everything from dubious second hand sources? You'd think a divine being would have left more evidence of himself if he really wanted everybody to believe in him.

Lots of perfectly morally upright but self-deluded individuals have unknowingly spread lies, and many morally corrupt individuals have successfully put on a disguise of morality. Why should it have been any different 2,000 years ago?

Do you think education was about teaching people to perform cover-ups back then? No, they usually studied classic literature and the like. Uneducated people can do cover-ups. Just look at the mafia. But it probably wasn't really a cover-up of deliberate lies anyways. More plausible is that Jesus was a mishmash of fictional and real stories that later got personified and mythologized.

I have no idea what that is.

Well of course the early church spread. If it didn't it wouldn't be around today and we'd be talking about the origins of some other church. That doesn't prove that the church's beliefs are true.

The Bible says lots of things. For instance, that the Sun once stopped in the sky for a couple days. That doesn't make it true.

20/20 hindsight vision. I'm not impressed.

What about them?

So? People say Elvis didn't really die, but that doesn't mean he's really alive. Same goes for Jesus.

Is presumed? Presumed by whom? Not by me. It seems much more plausible that the Jesus story was written to fit the prophecies as best as possible, not the other way around. You know, the same way Nostradamus freaks like to fit history into his prophecies, only the early Christians had more leeway since they were dealing with supernatural myths and not objective history.

Second miracle? I haven't ever been shown that any miracles have happened anywhere at any time. If Jesus wanted me to believe in his miracles, he would come and perform some for me. But since he isn't doing that, I can only conclude that he doesn't care about people like me who are simply incapable of making themselves believe in things for which there is no evidence. And if that's the case, well I don't want to be worshipping anyone that inconsiderate anyways.

But we can just throw out all the accounts of having met Mohammed or Vishnu or any of those other Gods of course. They don't count, because they don't agree with us.

I'm sorry, I can't deal with all these individually. I'm too lazy and I still don't see any conclusive evidence that Jesus even existed, much less that he was who Christians claim he was.

Let me get this straight. Here's a man who was sent to Earth 2,000 years ago to preach some message of peace (I guess God didn't care enough to send this message earlier), and yet despite being one with the omnipotent ruler of the universe didn't do anything worthy of mention by any of his non-partisan contemporaries and only managed to convince a tiny portion of the Earth's population that he was the real deal. Then, although he had all these miraculous superpowers, he could not defeat the Roman court system and its executioners. So he sacrificed himself to God (i.e. himself) and now he wants us all to pay for his sacrifice. I'm sorry, I've just never been able to understand how people swallow that.


Holy Cow, I got that somewhere from Wikipedia.

[F L E S H]

Just a side-note, Jesus' name in Hebrew is the same as the Hewbrew word for Joshua... A perfectly common Jewish name. There must have more than one... The reason we use "Jesus" today is because that's the way his name was preserved through Latin texts.

And now for the rant... What the fuck is up with Original sin? We're all suffering because ate the fruit that a snake gave her? Is that why we suffer? Bullshit people. Is that why Jesus came down to Earth and killed himself?

Think back a minute, what reason is there to believe these little fairy tales as opposed to Greek, Roman, Chinese, or Egyptian mythology? None, really, except that people who have been ruling us for the past 2,000 years have been shoving down our throats. It just doesn't make sense that you claim one fairy tale to be true while all the others are false, just because... well... just cause you said so...

[beachguy in thongs]

You're kinda going back to the storybook with that apple-thing.

Let's turn on ESPN Classic and hope it will take us back to the days when there were no lives.

[Oneironaut]

It was so you can die a good death, I guess. Commit all the sins you wish, Jesus has already died for the Original one so you have nothing to worry about. But sinning to destroy others, whether it's destroying them materialistically or spiritually, is not allowable because it deters the evolution of the human race.
You know what I'd like? I'd like to know what the hell "sin" is. What counts as sinning, and what doesn't? Even the best theologians are constantly arguing over it, so how is the layman supposed to figure it out?

And what IS up with this Original Sin? If God sent Jesus to Earth to get rid of Original Sin, does that mean that God made a mistake by instituting it in the first place? And why do so many Christians insist that Original Sin is still here? Why doesn't Jesus tell them that it isn't?

The answer is that Jesus is dead. Long dead. Assuming he existed in the first place, that is.

But smoke all the pot you want. That's why Jesus died.

The proceeding was a view of an independent party and not one that can be backed with the views or intentions of beachguy, inc.
Wow. Modern Christianity is way off the mark then. Jesus should really start telling people the truth when people talk to him. Oh wait, I forgot...

Can we please get over these ancient fairy tales and accept the world for what it really is? The fact is, any just and loving God would not include sin and evil into his creation. People like to say that good could not exist without evil, but if God is all-powerful certainly he could make a world with good but no evil. Therefore, there is no benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent being of any sort anywhere in the universe. It just can't be, if we look at the world around us and use a little common sense.

[beachguy in thongs]

I guess, before there was a physical world, the spiritual world committed an error that sent them to our mortal standpoint.

Why weren't there stories like the Garden of Eden fabricated in the New Testament?

My opinion is that Jesus sees the myths of the Old Testament, and if he had been a 20th century scholar, would've believed in evolution.