Senate Understanding Christianity

Careful! Don't automatically assume I think all of the stories you mentioned are myths.

As to why I believe Christianity is so special, it all hinges on Christ and His redemptive work. There's one thing I want to point out about His crucifixion, death, and burial. The soldiers guarding the tomb under orders from Pilate - because of the claims Jesus had made about His resurrection - reported on the third morning that the tomb was empty. These are ROMAN soldiers, trained to obey orders no matter what. They knew their heads would be on the block if the tomb was broken into, and they would have had no reason to lie and say the tomb was still sealed. If they had lied and the truth was later discovered, they would have been killed. As it happened, they told the truth and were paid money to keep silent and told to say the disciples had taken His body. The disciples, or any other mortal, could not, could not, have taken Jesus' body from the tomb right under the noses of the Roman guards without being stopped. Yet the tomb was empty that morning. That, to me, indicates there was a force other than natural at work here; that the claims Jesus made about Him being the Son of God are true.

 

Let's curb the hostility, please-Darth Boba

 

If the Bible is a myth, then Tiberius Caesar, Pilate, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, and other figures mentioned in it are fictional too.

 

No, that's not true at all. Fictional stories can, and do, contain many real elements. Using your logic, we could claim that all of the movies, books and video games that take place during World War 2 are real, or conversely, since we know Indiana Jones briefly met Hitler, this proves that Hitler is fictional too!

 

Sorry, that doesn't wash. If you don't believe the Bible, then you don't believe that Tiberius was Caesar when Jesus was born, that Herod was responsible for ordering the deaths of the children in Bethlehem, and that Pilate did not interact with Jesus before the crucifixion.

 

Why, exactly, don't I believe those people existed? Is the Bible the only source for the names of Herod and Tiberius? I think not.

Answe me this: if an author writes a fictional story using a real historical figure as a character, does that automatically mean that the entire story is true? The Count of Monte Cristo has Napoleon as a character; I guess the entirety of that movie must be true because Napoleon was a real person.

 

My previous example was a pretty poor choice. I wasn't thinking clearly.

I think we both need to take a step back and cool down for a bit, but I will be back, timmoishere. Count on it. And I'd like to have some explanations of what you believe, why the Bible is fiction compared to Gilgamesh and other stories. You're asking me a bunch of questions and not answering any of mine with any depth; only trite answers. It's becoming too much of a one sided debate. I suggest that you check out nonfiction sources on the Web and in print about Tiberius, Pilate, Herod the Great, Felix, Festus, and the other historical figures mentioned in the NT and see if any of them mention Jesus Christ.

 

I suggest you check out the following site: www.godisimaginary.com . It contains over 50 pages dedicated to deconstructing Christianity by carefully and critically examining its claims and reaching the only reasonable conclusion that all gods are imaginary.

The best one of these proofs is this one: http://www.godisimaginary.com/i7.htm . It deals with the absolute certainty with which you dismiss all other possible belief systems that I touched on earlier.

 

And I suggest you consider doing some of what I asked. I'm not going to answer all your questions while you don't answer any of mine. I want to know what you believe and why.

 

Let's curb the hostility, please-Darth Boba

 

More depraved than radical Muslims waging jihad against the Western world today in the name of Allah?

 

Let's curb the hostility, please-Darth Boba

 

No they don't. Forgetting even Christianity and "turn the other cheek" for a moment, in Islam there's explicit commands to protect people of other faiths, especially the "People of the Book" (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians), and Mohammed said that to kill one person is like killing the entire world but to save one person is like saving the entire world. And yes, they both worship the same God, and have influenced each other, Islam builds off Christianity in the same way Christianity builds off Judaism, that's why Jesus is a major prophet and the messiah from a virgin birth in Islam too (with Abraham, Moses, and most OT prophets also being prophets in Islam).

 

The thread title is "understanding". timmoishere let's stick with the OP's intent in this thread.

 

There are passages in both the Bible and the Quran that specifically say to kill nonbelievers. The fact that there are other passages in that same text that say killing is wrong is even more evidence of the contradictions contained therein.

It's hard for me to look up the specific passage in Exodus on my iPhone, but there is a quote from Moses (after receiving the Ten Commandments), where he tells his followers to go slaughter an entire tribe but save the virgin girls for themselves.

 

timmoishere: You are missing the point of this thread. It's not winning, mmkay?

 

Skepticism and critical thinking are essential to understanding anything. Christianity shouldn't be excluded from that. Otherwise this thread would only be filled with "God is so great!" posts. I'm being civil, so if this is my way at arriving at an understanding, what's wrong with that?

 

You're not being civil, though. Your last post was implying that all Muslims murder people because they're Muslims. Look at the tone of the rest of the thread or, for that matter, the original post and go with that tone instead of trying to piss people off.

 

To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven... a time to kill, and a time to heal Ecclesiastes 3:1,3

There is no contradiction. Most of the time it is wrong to kill. Upon rare occasions, it is necessary to kill in order to stop killers. Ever see the movie Sergeant York? It's a classic starring Gary Cooper and is based very closely on the real life story of Alvin York, a pacifist Christian who was drafted in WW1 and struggled to overcome the apparent contradictions you're talking about. He single-handedly captured or killed over a hundred Germans and won the Medal of Honor. One of his officers asked him how a pacifist had come to do that. He said, "I seen them machine guns killing hundreds of people and I thought the best I could do was stop them from killing." As a Christian and a soldier with 8 deployments to the sandbox, I totally understood that.

 

Satan later decieved Adam and Eve in Eden, claiming they would become like God and know the difference between good and evil. They did become like Him, all right - but at a high price; physical death and loss of fellowship with God. Since then, humanity and all creation has been tainted.

Where in Genesis are we told that the description of the "serpent" is to be taken at anything other than face value; i.e., that the serpent is really someone else in disguise and not simply a talking snake that has not yet been made to slither?

And while I'm not often one to agree with Ayn Rand, "what are the evils man acquired when he fell from the state they consider perfection? Their myth declared that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge: he acquired a mind and became a rational being....he became a moral being....he became a productive being."

God is the God of justice and mercy and slow to anger, but when a people does not repent and acknowledge His glory, then His wrath is poured out on them.

"I require people once a week to tell me how great I am because, while I'm all-powerful, I'm also amazingly insecure. Also a river of fire where souls are tortured for all of eternity for finite crimes is my idea of justice."

 

"If the Bible is a myth, then Tiberius Caesar, Pilate, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, and other figures mentioned in it are fictional too. "

No, it means that some historical characters are used fictitiously, rather like Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers. In this case, Herod the Great's "Slaughter of the Innocents" is an event recorded nowhere outside of the Bible, even though our best source for his reign is Josephus, he records a great many other atrocities he committed. Also fictional, the requirement under Quirinius's census that Hebrews return to their ancestral homeland, thus requiring Joseph to travel to the home city of David, and taking his pregnant wife (also not a requirement of any census) with him. Fictional once again is the claim that these two events could have overlapped, what with Herod having died in 4 BC and the census having taken place in 6 AD.

Pilate was a notorious Jew hater who didn't need Jews to convince him to kill one of their own. That Jesus was crucified, rather than stoned to death, indicates he was guilty of more than just a violation of Jewish law.

 

Do I smell a Firefly fan? They smell like strawberries.

I have friends who self-identify as pagans and practice Wicca, and I have every intention of suffering them to live. They're friends, and they're good people. I think a better translation of that verse is, "Be prepared to execute those who practice evil magic." Of course it's better to live and let live, but if there is no other way to halt evil, it may be necessary to kill an evil-doer.