Correcting Misguided Conceptions and Proving the Bibles Authenticity

Originally posted by DanteMustDie

Therefore, the challenge is yours to prove to me that the Bible is myth

Anybody can do that, it’s got a talking snake in it – of course is a myth



Moving on
If in 1000 years from now someone says New York was a real place therefore Spiderman must be real – will that make true?

Well if you are someone who was brought up in some kind of Spiderman cult and only looked for data that >supported< your beliefs then yes you probably would think that proves Spiderman is real

Anybody else not brainwashed since childhood would say “a man shooting spider web out of his hands – this must be a story”


I wasn’t brought up believing in the bible, and so when I look at it I cannot see any difference between it and myths about Zeus or Odin.

that fact that there's a place called Israel or that Romans existed or that there was some dude(s) called Jesus >doesn't< mean and so therefore there is a god - or that snakes can talk

Originally posted by DanteMustDie
reply to post by Nosred

 

The Gnostic Gospels were discovered in 1945, Upper Egypt near the town of Nag Hammadi. There are only 52 copies in 13 leather-bound papyrus codices as opposed to the 5,800 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and the 25,000 copies in various languages. There are few Gnostic scholars who would claim the discovered writings prove more authentic than the accounts of Jesus in the New Testament.

That's because the Romans destroyed any copies they could find. You know, to suit their agenda like I said earlier. The Romans didn't exactly take kindly to people reading books that pretty much said "Please disregard everything the Roman church is telling you, thanks".

There is absolutely nothing that makes the books included in the Bible any more valid than the Gnostic gospels, therefore your bit about all the historical records of Jesus being consistent is just false.

Originally posted by bogomil
reply to post by Dezero

 

You wrote:

["Where did you get the idea that diversity is a sign of the devil?
I was merely pointing out that the devil attempts to divide people by deception of their own beliefs. A lot of Christians are blocked from seeing truth purely by their inability to be honest with themselves."]

Thanks for narrowing and clarifying your original statement to that 33.399 versions of christianity are 'blocked'. I take it, that you are not not 'blocked', but a 'true christian'.

No I'm not small minded that I believe I know the true way of God. I don't believe such a person exists. The Bible cannot not be interpreted by one person. You can find it in revelations.
Everything fell into place when I learnt more about my churches beliefs. If I thought it was not the truth I wouldn't be going there. I don't want to judge people but there are a lot of people in different churches that are stay because the church has become their family. This will be an important factor in the final judgement. People who knew the truth but followed lies because it suited their lives.

Quote: ["Most people who have a dislike of something will take the first negative thing they see regarding this subject and lap it up without investigating fully."]

What qualifies as 'fully'? Eventually agreeing with someone like you..... or say 45 years of studying existential questions.

I would say it is looking at equal arguments with an open mind for and against a subject before forming an opinion. Especially With a subject as important as the existence of God,

Quote: ["Your hatred towards Christianity or organized religion is what is actually blocking you from discovering the truth........"]

Character-analyses of this kind are irrelevant and anyway the argument is circular.

Quote continued: [".........Did you ever think of that?"]

Why is that important, considering that my basis for thinking is rational reasoning without rhetorical questions. Which should be enough.

If your basis for thinking is rational reasoning then you should believe in God. You look at the world for answers yet it never offers us the truth. The decline in morals coincides with the decline of faith in Christ, that is also prophesied in the bible. The fact that the worst atrocities on mankind in the 1900's were by people who attacked God and Christianity. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky...
And now look at the biggest threat to our existence is - North Korea, China and Russia all mainly atheist countries (although Russia has become more religious since the collapse of the Soviet Union.)
Do you think eating aborted babies is a Christian thing?

Quote: ["My cousin recently told me he doesn't believe in God. He read The God delusion and now he's a converted atheist. I asked him if he investigated Christianity read the bible or prayed for direction before he came to his conclusion, he said no."]

I'm not your cousin.

Quote: ["And there we have it, he didn't want to believe in the first place."]

You mean, there YOU have it, based on your one-person poll.
That was merely one example, i'm not writting a book on why atheists don't believe, I'm merely giving one example of why.
And actually his brother is pretty much the same if not worse.
If I'd have known we were doing polls I would have got more people involved.

Quote: ["He lives his life of self indulgence and he doesn't want God to intrude on his enjoyment."]

Not agreeing with you can be defined as 'self-indulgence'? How peculiar.

I could have posted what sort of thing's he's done but it is not my place to discuss the ins and outs of a family members life to strangers. If the truth be told Self-indulgence is a polite way of putting it. You can trust me on that.

Quote: ["It is really simple when you look at it.
The truth is always simple, that is why atheists usually have above average intelligence, because the theory is too complex for the simple mind"]

Rest assured. Intelligence is a satanic (or more precisely: Luciferian) plot. And that explains everything circularly once more.

The foundations of western society were built upon Christian morality by intelligent people. The bible is not a simple book, although anyone can follow the guidelines.
How many intelligent Christians get publicity in the media? None, instead you get idiots like Bill O'Reilly. Instead we should be seeing people like Ravi Zacharias or William Lane Craig fighting the case. But then again that doesn't fit the agenda does it.

I

reply to post by Dezero


This may be off topic. so I apologize now. I learned something when quoting in post, you have to have as many endquotes as you have quotes. I mean the brackets.

So if there are three of these < quote > there should be three of these < / quote >. Before you hit reply, make sure you have fixed this. It is easy to do, just count how many there are, and before your reply message, put the correct number of < / quote > in. That makes your reply much easier to read. This is something I had to learn, and just passing this along to people who might not know.

Oh, and make sure there are no spaces between the brackets.

reply to post by DanteMustDie

There are many primary materials left from the Council Nicea. . .

Depends on how you define, Primary.
Wikipedia defines it as,

In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called original source or evidence) is an artifact, a document, a recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic.

Just thought I would mention that. In my earlier post I pointed to the page in the History of the Council where it said that the original documents were gone after around 400AD, leaving copies made up of the Creed that supposedly came out of the council even though there is no mention of a creed in the canons.

In the book I linked to in my earlier post, it mentions a witness to the original documents as S Epiphanius. Here is what Wikipedia says of him (in part),

Saint Epiphanius of Salamis (ca. 310–320 – 403) was bishop of Salamis and metropolitan of Cyprus at the end of the 4th century. He is considered a Church Father.

The book gives, c.400, apparently as the year, approximately, of his death. In the footnote of the book, The History of the Councils, it cites where Epiphanius wrote this as, Epiphan. Heres. 69. 11. That would be: Adversus Haereses, "Against Heresies", written between 374 and 377 (I am again quoting from Wikipedia). So this would have been about 50 years after the Council of Nicaea. Not a nice person, this Epiphanius, along the lines of Athanasius, it seems, and is maybe best known for being responsible for, by instigation, the persecution of non-Christians who lived on Cyprus, and the destruction of their temples. Serious anti-heretic who had names on his list of heresies far beyond the numbers found on anyone else's lists, and took sides in bigger controversies with whoever the Emperor seemed to favor.
So, Epiphanius wrote a book against heresies and probably to show how the Church frowned on such things, cited as an example, the Council of Nicaea, and says that he knew somehow that in fact there existed the document signed by the 318 attendees of the council. Seems that what we have now is not even in the Greek, which the original was in, but the Latin, and only 228 names, and that leaves out names of people who are otherwise know to have been there (supposedly). Some of the names on the list are completely wrong because it would say, so and so, Bishop of such and such, when we know it was actually someone else (as in, there was no such person because we know who was actually the bishop of that named place) . So, to conclude, what we have is no real or even close documents, and only witnessed by highly biased and evil people who only say that they somehow know it is true, without having actually see in themselves.
The other witnesses cited by DanteMustDie are Athanasius and Eusebius. To get a clue on their bias, one must only look at a bestseller of today, Misquoting Jesus. Athanasius spent a lot of time and energy in his job as Bishop of Alexandria, traveling church to church promoting his version of the New Testament canon which just so happens to match exactly with the one we have today. Eusebius was the recipient of a very nice commission from Emperor Constantine to make copies from his print shop, of three hundred New Testaments, to be placed in various churches of the better sort throughout the empire.

Anybody can do that, it’s got a talking snake in it – of course is a myth

Quite the fallible argument. Whatever confronted Eve probably came to be called a serpent because of the judgment God pronounced upon it, that it would crawl on its belly and eat dust all the days of its life.(Gen. 3:14) But what it looked like before its judgment is anybody’s guess, except that it almost certainly didn’t look like a snake. Satan himself is called “that ancient serpent” in Rev. 12:9 but nobody thinks of him as looking like a snake. Paul said that he masquerades as an angel of light. (2 Cor. 11:14)

We don’t know what form the devil took on to have his chat with Eve, but whatever it was didn’t frighten her. Nor did she appear surprised to find herself conversing with it, but was persuaded by it’s logic, though flawed, and the authority with which it spoke.

Moving on
If in 1000 years from now someone says New York was a real place therefore Spiderman must be real – will that make true?

Well if you are someone who was brought up in some kind of Spiderman cult and only looked for data that >supported< your beliefs then yes you probably would think that proves Spiderman is real

Anybody else not brainwashed since childhood would say “a man shooting spider web out of his hands – this must be a story”


I wasn’t brought up believing in the bible, and so when I look at it I cannot see any difference between it and myths about Zeus or Odin.

that fact that there's a place called Israel or that Romans existed or that there was some dude(s) called Jesus >doesn't< mean and so therefore there is a god - or that snakes can talk

That childish altercation is so far off base. Perhaps you should reread the part where I explained Jesus was a REAL living person as he was mentioned by many historical pagan writers. You'll find that information in the second post. Concerning Jesus truly being the son of God, that is for the reader to decide. Let's not come up with patronizing nonsense saying otherwise.

Double post.

That's because the Romans destroyed any copies they could find. You know, to suit their agenda like I said earlier. The Romans didn't exactly take kindly to people reading books that pretty much said "Please disregard everything the Roman church is telling you, thanks".

There is absolutely nothing that makes the books included in the Bible any more valid than the Gnostic gospels, therefore your bit about all the historical records of Jesus being consistent is just false.

edit on 30-9-2011 by Nosred because: (no reason given)

Are you illiterate or did you blatantly ignore the information I provided?

ERWIN W. LUTZER Senior Pastor of the Moody Church wrote:

"First, the Judas document was known by the early apologist Irenaeus who wrote against the foolish ideas of the Gnostics in AD 180—so its discovery some years ago really does not shed much more additional light on it. Second, all scholars agree that it was written about a hundred years after the time of Jesus, so obviously it is a fictitious account of the Judas story. Third, it was written by Gnostics who rebelled against the Old Testament God and adopted any person who stood against God as their hero: some considered themselves followers of the serpent who brought enlightenment to the woman, others called themselves Cainites because they extolled Cain, the first murderer, and others even admired the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now let me ask: is it any wonder that such people would take Judas, the villain of the New Testament, and turn him into a hero?

In short, the Gnostic gospels were discarded because their credibility could not hold a candle to the New Testament. Not because of some bogus protocol.
You have yet to provide a vigorous argument.

reply to post by jmdewey60

I shall regard your comments after I check your references and my own. For the record, Wikipedia's information is hit and miss.

reply to post by DanteMustDie

In short, the Gnostic gospels were discarded because their credibility could not hold a candle to the New Testament.

On the contrary, many of the teachings of Jesus can be found in Gnostic texts...

They were disregarded because of the time frame in which they were supposedly written, and because they showed christ to be human as opposed to the churches "superhero" status they gave him...

Either way the new testament and the gnostic scriptures can't be proven to be completely authentic by scientific means, the only thing that authenticates the bible is "the bible"... Which is no better then saying something is true because "i said it is"

reply to post by SerialVelocity


Its called faith and those that lack it will never experience the power it took to make those events happen. The power of the Holy Spirt , it is unmistakable when iit enters your very being , your essence , your soul. Faith is the foundation of all that is good in this world . Love is not possible without faith and I say to all those who have no faith that you have not experienced true love as in the love of God the Father .

Well OP you definitely did not bring the argument to a "screeching halt" as you had hoped.

Here is a contradiction:

Humans cannot have come from nothing thus there must be a Creator. Who is the Creator's Creator because something cannot come from nothing? Did the Creator come from nothing?