Clearly he has no evidence to offer.

You are the one who made the claim. I have done plenty of my own legwork.

If I make a claim and if I am asked to support it I will do so. It matters not to me whether anyone accepts my evidence. I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. If I have information and they request it, I will offer it. What they think about it is no concern of mine.

It does not have to get personal.

I have found no information on any Archaeological evidence of the Biblical characters I am looking for. I thought that if you did, you might share your information.

You should not worry whether or not I dismiss it. If you want me to consider it, I appreciate the information.

bill gates and warren buffet, two avowed agnostics, have probably done more towards good will and charity in the past several years than all the churches in america combined. and neither has a history of atrocities against humanity. yes, humans are humans with or without the dogma of religion and there is no shortage of humans who've not fallen into the dogma that do no harm and lead charitable lives.

i was thinking about something earlier. being agnostic i know more agnostics and atheists than i think most faithful know. being part of a devoutly christian family i also know a great many christians. in all my life i've been screwed by folks about on par with everybody else but i'll be damned if i've ever been screwed by an agnostic or an atheist. been screwed by numerous christians, a few muslims that i know of and the occasional jew but never by someone who has not fallen into the religious dogma. does this prove anything in the least? nope, nothing at all. just one man's experiences in life.

charity doesnt REQUIRE religion, but charity has been much more commonly supported by religion(christianity in any case) than atrocity has,,,

People are generous by nature when it comes to helping other people.
Churches are organized and they are quickly able to provide it when it is needed in a community.

When we had a big snowstorm in our town (4 feet of snow) our community and our churches housed and fed a lot of people who were stranded. There were not enough motels to house them all. They stayed in the community center, in churches, in people's homes etc.

Trucks were not running so our town was simply running out of food within three days. We had to let the people leave as the roads were barely being cleared.

Also I was impressed by the Churches in our town who loaded up supplies to take to New Orleans after Katrina.

molecules, atoms, and quarks are not invisible. i'm sure there was wind that humans could feel when the bible was written but if we're talking science, what method was used to discover valleys on the bottom of the oceans 2500 years ago. a guess? where does the bible mention the word "sperical" as regards the earth? i've read the word "circle" i believe in the bible but most definately not the highly more accurate description of a spherical earth. of course sphere is likewise not quite correct scientifically as the circumference at the equator is greater than that around the poles. i find it interesting that the first christians to visit japan were thought to be filthy barbarians who considered bathing to be unhealthy; the japanese who'd never heard of the bible but emphasised strongly the importance of cleanliness and washing with water.



lightning is hardly electronics. that's like saying fire sounds alot like combustion engineering to me. just try to transmit voice over lightning and see how you make out. if the bible prohibits eating pork it is prohibiting an excellent source of protein, amino acids, b vitamins, iron, niacin and many other nutrients we require as humans. why no prohibition of eggs which are much more likely to have salmonila than pork or even peanut butter for that matter. and if there's a danger, why not a warning? why the prohibition??? are shellfish prohibited in the bible now??? which characters which were thought to be fictional have been verified by archeologists within the past 40 years and who thought they were fictional anyway??? which fates of which cities were predicted and by whom??




well, so far your list is quite easy to deny and/or dismiss. not about to search for myself, got too many other places to search where i think i can find real answers and no time to search your sources and mine. but if you care to find 700 or 7 examples that i "can't deny or dismiss" i'll take a look at the few i've time for and either accept, deny or dismiss as i deem appropriate.

Personally I think it's a real shame when people need to be convinced of some God before they are willing to do good things and charity for others.

Besides, that totally misses the point. The point is that these Abrahamic texts can so easily be used to support hateful things, such as racism, male-chauvinism, heathenism, etc.

Look at how even the Christians use Jesus as a battering ram to renounce anyone who would LOVE to support a DIVINE BEING such as a "God", and all that is holy and good, yet they are renounced by the Christians as being "ungodly" or "not of God" if they aren't acknowledging Jesus as "The Christ"

Here you have well-meaning people doing all the WRONG things for what they believe to be the RIGHT reasons!

It's truly sad MsHarmony.

Christianity is an "exclusive" religion.

Sure they CLAIM to love everyone.

They CLAIM that everyone is "Welcome" to join them, or participate in their religious bigotry.

But are they actually prepared to embrace other loving views of "God" or "Spirit".

NO, they are NOT!

They totally renounce and chastise anyone who would even remotely suggest that the ancient Hebrews picture of God might be wrong, and that Jesus may have been merely a LOVING moral man.

That is totally UNACCEPTABLE to the Christians.

Oh, sure, they CLAIM to "tolerate" this. Sure, you are WELCOME to participate in Christian charity programs and whatnot, you are even WELCOME to attend their religious gatherings and sermons.

But don't be suggesting that Jesus might not be God or you will be totally viewed as being a poor LOST SOUL who simply hasn't yet come around to the reality of "GOD".

It's hypocritical in its essence MsHarmony.

It's divisive, and refuses to truly embrace LOVE without contaminating it with religious bigotry.

How many Christian groups are sincerely going to treat someone like me with "respect" for very long if every time the topic of Jesus comes up, I'm suggesting that I don't support the idea that Jesus was "The Christ" and I don't support the idea that the Old Testament has anything at all to do with God.

They would view me as a total distraction to their views and it wouldn't be very long at all before some authority in the group took me to the side and chastised me telling me that if I don't agree with the "Christian view" either keep my views to myself or please leave because I clearly don't support their views.

Let's face it. They ultimately aren't about to embrace anyone who doesn't support their religious views.

LOVE is meaningless if it doesn't include a stance that Jesus is the only begotten son of the God of Abraham and the entire Old Testament stands strong and tall as the WILL and TESTAMENT of our Creator!

This is what the religion ultimately stands for.

Not love and good will (you can find that anywhere), but it stands solely for supporting the notion that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb of Yahweh who died to PAY for your sins and must be acknowledged as the only LORD and SAVIOR.

Period AMEN!

Nothing short of that will be embraced with LOVE.

Love is SECONDARY to this religious view.

In fact, love is so secondary to this view that if you take any stance against the idea of Jesus being LORD and SAVIOR, you can easily incite Hatred directed toward yourself emanating from the Christians.

The Christians can become extremely irate over this.

That is extremely controversial MsHarmony.

For something like 300 years Christian zealots tortured and burned midwives at that stake as "Witches" in the name of this superstitious religion that had them believing that these women had sold their souls to Satan.

You talk about CHARITY!

Those very midwives who were being tortured and burned to death in the name of Christianity, were most likely trying to help others the best way that they knew how. They were probably offering medical help and various other support to others.

I watched a documentary on this, and there are documented cases where pagan midwives (probably highly spiritual pagans) were trying to help Christian women with child-birth, and the child came out deformed.

So the pagan midwife was charged as being a "Witch". Horrendously TORTURED endlessly until finally in a state of total despair she confessed to anything they would suggest including to confessing to being a "witch" at which point they burnt her alive on a pole!

How utterly disgusting and pathetic that such religious SUPERSTITIONS could cause humans to be so cruel.

IMHO, there are not enough "Good Works" in the world to make up for the atrocities that these superstitions have caused people to believe.

Why support this dastardly religion when we can do "Good Works" without it?

It's just totally unnecessary.

Why support superstitions and a believe that Satan even exists?

Do you realize that by supporting the notion that Jesus was the only begotten son of Yahweh, you are ALSO supporting the notion that evil spirits exist.

These superstitions go hand-in-hand. Jesus himself was said to have case evil demons out of people. He supposedly cast SEVEN evil demons out of Mary Magdalene.

Do you honestly believe that poor Mary Magdalene was actually possessed by SEVEN demons?

Come on?

And if you want to claim that they were probably just "metaphorical" demons. Like maybe she just had seven "bad habits" that Jesus helped her get over. That's fine.

But if we're going to view demons as being metaphors, then why not also recognize that to say that Jesus is the "Son of God" is just a metaphor too!

It's possible to salvage Jesus from this religion if you really wanted to.

I did.

I have far more respect and love for Jesus as a mortal man that I could ever have for him had he truly be some sort of demigod.

If Jesus is truly a living spirit who was indeed a manifestation of God, then I personally think he would be pretty pathetic.

He would approach Saul to cover him into Paul, but he didn't even bother to approach the Christian Monks who wrote the "Witch's Hammer" that resulted in the torturing and burning to death of tens of thousands of innocent women over a 300 year period or more?

Please. Give me a BREAK.

As a mortal man I can actually respect and love Jesus for what he did, (i.e renounce the horrible immoral things of the Torah in favor of teaching love and sanity)

But ss an all-powerful incarnation of God who could have prevented things like the burning times and didn't? I think he's pathetic!

So the very notion of Jesus as "God" is utterly meaningless too me.

But as a loving mortal brother, he truly sacrificed an awful lot to try to get people to be more LOVING toward each other.

I can accept Jesus and embrace him with Love and Respect as a mortal man.

But as a God he sucks.

That's my stance and um stick'in to it.

it amazes me that people continue to assess that love can be found 'anywhere'

but seperation, hate, judgment, ridicule,,etc,, are exclusively the result of 'religion'

cant have it both ways, say humans created religion but than say religion created what humans do,,,,

IF one truly believes HUMANS create religion, than it follows that WHATEVER is found in religion comes from HUMANS and their capability WITHOUT it,,,,

it is just as 'unnecessary' to support.believe any written history,, yet people will and do because thats part of learning and growing about things that interest us

namely , the history of individuals of the past, the history of ancestors, the history of a land, the history of biblical personalities is no different,,

therefore not pointless at all,,,

I agree with Abra that the Bible has pretty much already been "discredited" by respected scholars and others.

But humans are slow to learn and hard to change. It has taken centuries to program these traditional religions into the whole consciousness of a society.

There are new religions popping up all the time and divisions of denominations happening all the time. Christians can't even agree on the name of their God or their Savior or how and when to worship him.

...and yet many were spawned from the same tale, which has yet to be proven true.

The Scientology story involves aliens (non human life forms.)

So does the Mormon story.

For that matter all religions involve aliens or non human aberrational life forms of some kind. This is widespread.

Eckankar still exists today, even after having been exposed as plagiarism and seemingly degenerated into a cult plagued with rumors of misconduct. I saw a public advertisement for Eckankar on television last week. Their spiritual leader claims to be God made flesh, the Mahanta, representative of God in human form. Unless they changed that claim. They changed a lot of things as do all religions.

Then there are countless other spiritual leaders and gurus looking for followers too.

And some of your most dedicated true blue 'believers' and zealots have made sport of me for suggesting that 'aliens' are among us. For this they ridicule me in an effort to discredit me and anything I say that they don't agree with. Yet they haven't taken a good look at their own beliefs.

I'm overloaded in the area of conflicting information and most of it is Bull S...t. Yes, the Internet is responsible,and so am I for looking..searching.. but I have changed because of it. And I have learned a lot. I probably have more information than I need or want simply because 95% of it is bull.

I'm cleaning house. I'm reorganizing my brain and restructuring my belief system.

what scholars have 'discredited' the entire bible,, just curious where this evidence is?

is the information used to 'discredit' infallible and absolutely verified as true

what makes these 'scholars' interpretations and conclusions any more/less believable than the 'scholars' who give credit to the bible?


How do we know which authors are 'believable' and which are not? Which scholars are correct and which are wrong?

dont we essentially decide one way or another and at that point naturally notice and seek out those things that support that 'self attained' knowledge?

I have never taken that stance personally.

All I'm saying is that you don't need to support bigoted religions to be a good person.

And I'm also saying that religions that EXCLUDE people from their "God" for not believing in their religious dogma are ALREADY supporting a hateful and divisive notion whether they realize it or not.

You don't need to support Christian religious bigotry to recognize that the moral values taught by Jesus were worthy of following.

What I find to be truly sad is that this religion took such a GOOD THING (like the moral values of Jesus) and destroyed them by using Jesus as an icon to support religious bigotry.

Like I say, the very religion that claims to support Jesus has actually become the antithesis of the moral precepts that Jesus himself apparently tried to teach.

Love everyone without "judging", INCLUDING (and perhaps especially) to not judge them based on whether or not they think Jesus was the son of the God of Abraham.

Using Jesus himself as the standard by which to JUDGE other people's relationship with God has to be the greatest irony in all of history.

Very good questions.
Ones' that I myself would ask.

If you are interested I will find the information for you.

As far as "absolutely verified" or "infallible" I don't know. That would depend on your own ability to ascertain credibility.
The only thing I do is to judge by comparison to the opposition.

likewise, Ive never taken the stance that to be 'good' one must follow a 'religion'

I just tire of being told that its pointless to be 'good' AND follow a religion

Jesus taught the doctrine of God, and he did so embracing all, but he still sent people away as well with instruction to humble themself and love God completely

if people were to love God completely, I could say, it would eliminate alot of evil in the world

but that would be a HUGE assumption, and some people would find it about as possible as they apparently find abstaining from sex

It is our nature to think of OURSELF(our pleasures) first and any plea to restrict them in any way is met , by our nature, with resistance

A great example is that we are taught in formal education about fight or flight, that our NATURAL instinct when we are in danger is to fight or run,,that is what is INDOCTRINATED into us from a young age in defining our very IDENTITY as humans

but Jesus said, we have a third option, to turn the other cheek,, neither fighting nor running,,,these third options are present in many situations which seem like no brainers and which we are indoctrinated to believe our 'natural' and 'normal' and harmless


We define ourself by our own pleasure and Jesus taught us to be pleasing to God,, he did not do it with brimstone and punishments, he just taught because that was his purpose

Using Jesus as an excuse to JUDGE the relationship that people have with God is disgusting.

Yet this is the very BASIS of Christianity and what it stands for.

It's nothing more than a religion that has evolved to use Jesus as an excuse to JUDGE the relationship that other people have with God.

It's an EXCLUSIVE religion that excludes anyone who renounces that Jesus is God as being "Lost souls" or worse.

It amounts to nothing more than an institution that uses Jesus as an excuse to JUDGE the spirituality of other people in Jesus' name.

It's the antithesis of the moral precepts that Jesus himself tried to instill in people.

That observation alone should be enough to discredit this religion.

No further investigations should even be required.

Jesus himself can be supported, at least plausibly, as a possible historical figure if you care to do that.

But to hold him over everyone's head as a litmus test to judge their relationship with God, is simply wrong.

Yet this is precisely what Christianity preaches and proselytizes continually.

this is a common mistake made by christians, msharmony. don't know if it's paranoia or what but i don't recall anybody here or anyplace else say that "seperation, hate, judgment, ridicule, etc., are EXCLUSIVELY the result of religion. what people most often say and what christians fail to hear is that many, many people within and without religion have these harmful traits and that being christian, muslim or whatever religion does not ensure that a person will be any more or less guilty of those things. on the contrary, ask a christian where righteousness can be found and i most often hear, "only from the bible". perhaps you've experienced people saying that all the problems of the world are do to religion but i'd never say that nor have i ever heard anybody say that. yes, i do believe the world would be a safer place without religious dogma to infect the minds of people of weak minds who are easily manipulated into doing dastardly deeds. but i hardly blame all the worlds troubles on religion.

Abracadabra I did a celebrity lookalike of you.

http://mingle2.com/topic/show/302197?page=25

I have no problem with "loving God completely".

But the problem with Christianity is that they claim to KNOW what God expects from people via the BIBLE!

And therein lies the problem.


They refuse to recognize that atheists can actually be "loving God completely" without even acknowledging religion and religious doctrines, or even the actual concept of "God" itself.

If I see an atheists who loves life and people, then as far as I'm concerned they "Love God Completely" for there is nothing more to loving God than loving life and people.

I don't judge a same-gender couples to not be "Loving God Completely" just because some ancient doctrine claims that God hates homosexuality.

The problem with the Christian concept of "Loving God Completely" is precisely that it's tied directly to JUDGING whether people are in compliance with this via claims that have been made in the BIBLE.

And that includes JESUS!

No Christian is going to acknowledge that I am "Loving God Completely" if I refuse to recognize and acknowledge Jesus as the only begotten son of the God of Abraham who died to pay for my sins as the sacrificial lamb of God.

If I renounce all of that, then they would be totally convinced that I am NOT "Loving God Completely".

So that whole notion becomes the Christian fodder for JUDGING whether or not a person is "Loving God Completely".

That's the problem right there.

Also, just for the record I disagree with your evaluation of those ancient stories for example you just said:



i don't believe that Jesus even remotely would suggest that anyone be stupid.

If you're in DANGER by all means RUN!

To stand there turning your other cheek would be pure stupidity.

See, a religion that is based on interpretations from specific doctrines as being the CORRECT things to do in order to be "Completely Loving God" is already problematic. Because not everyone will even agree on the interpretations.

I believe that when Jesus taught people to turn the other cheek he meant that as a metaphor implying that we should not SEEK REVENGE like the Jews had been TAUGHT to do by the Torah via an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

He never implied that a person should be so stupid as to stand in the face of danger physically offering up their other cheek.

That would be utterly stupid and serve no one any good purpose, IMHO.

~~~~

So as soon as we begin to claim that some specific doctrine represents the precise behavior that some God expects or requests from us, we are already asking for problems because no two people will agree on what those doctrines actually mean.

~~~~

We are far better off to recognize that Jesus was just a mortal man like the rest of us and simply did his best to try to get his fellow Jews from doing the horrific things that the Torah had taught them to do.

After all they had been taught that God approves and condones the seeking of revenge and getting EVEN. "And eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" they had been taught as God's directive.

Jesus was just trying to get his fellow brothers to rise above that.

But for people today to take that to mean that we should foolishly offer up our other cheek to people who are taking advantage of us or physically attacking would be foolish, IMHO. I don't believe that Jesus was asking anyone to be a fool.

~~~~

Do you think Jesus would have us turn the other cheek to someone like Hitler.

Oh sure Adolf, come on over and make slaves out of us. We'll do twice the work for you that you ask of us!

No, I don't believe that Jesus would expect anyone to be so foolish.

I've been told by a lot of people that that particular photo of me reminds them of Anthony Hopkins. This is the first time anyone has suggested Donald Mallard.

I have another photograph of me that everyone says it looks like Alan Alda. I'll look around and see if I can find it.