elyettoner wrote:Fair point, but then I'm coming from the perspective that if you hate someone you're committing murder in your heart.
"Thought crime does not entail death, thought crime
is death." The idea that having thoughts is somehow a crime is morally despicable and I hope it's a doctrine I shall never subscribe to.
People cock up, sometimes majorly. I once met a chap who'd done something pretty bad (he never told me what) and had fled his home country (Germany) to escape the law. When he became a Christian he was truly sorry for what he'd done, returned to Germany, served his time and now he tries to put back what he took from the community and is a pretty nice guy. Should he be denied that second chance?
Anecdotes can be nice, but don't really count for much. Anyway, you said it yourself, the guy served his time, justice is done. A second chance implies getting off scot free.
Maybe you think he shouldn't and that's fair enough, but I think he should.
He should be tried fairly for his crimes by a jury of his peers. Perhaps you would prefer to have him judged by some unaccountable unelected unquestionable authority?
A couple of years back a guy spoke at Solid Rock who'd killed someone when he was part of a gang. He did the time, became a Christian in prison and now works to get kids out of gangs. He did wrong because of he was misled and lacked guidance from his parents (so he said). Should he have been denied a second chance? I think not, but again you may disagree.
See above
I strongly believe because of meeting these two people that if someone recognises their wrongs and is truly sorry for them they deserve a second chance. We all cock up, just some more than others.
I am not arguing against this. If people are truly sorry, then they will accept justice.
I'm going to abandon analogies because I'm obviously not very good at them! God acts as the judge; he chucks everyone into Hell because we're wrong and deserve it, but we're the ones who have done the wrong. So in a sense, I suppose God is the one pulling the trigger, but only in the way that a firing squad shooting a criminal does.
Now the analogy works because you must presuppose everyone is evil/guilty by default. In this perspective merely being born is a crime and we are guilty until proven innocent. Being born is not something people have a lot of control over. Do you think it fair that we have to suffer eternally for something that our ancestors supposedly did? You would be crying to the heavens if you heard of a court that executed a child because the father was a murderer. But you think this fair, because that's what the doctrine teaches?
Sorry, I meant to put not all the rules (ie of the Bible). Not all of those rules are intended to make the world a better place
Then of what value are they to anyone?
we're all selfish people and loving our neighbour as ourselves isn't something we like to do.
Speak for yourself, and besides, those two things aren't mutually exclusive. One can be still be a good person with a degree of selfishness.
You brought up hallucinations, not me. It just seems a pretty poor argument.
Yes, the idea that personal revelation is something that exists and can provide knowledge of the universe despite all the evidence that they are just hallucinations or in extreme cases madness is a pretty poor argument. Certainly not enough to overturn the whole of physics. A few hundred years ago you were considered a saint if you could hear the voice of god, what do you think happens to those people these days now that we know about mental illnesses?
The temptation not to respond to such a pathetic argument is strong. The nut down at the local institution isn't running hospitals, carrying out scientific experiments, teaching children, keeping the books and all the other things Christians worldwide are doing. And I doubt he's ever been in a room with a lot of other people who also think they're Napoleon.
All non-sequitars. Whether he's a good person or not doesn't affect his claim to be Napoleon (plus he's a bit busy being locked up to do anything good)
Incidentally, we only have four sources which tell us about Socrates - fewer than for Jesus - and not all of these were written by people who knew him directly, but do you believe in him?
I like this. No I do not
believe in him. His existence is certainly plausible, but he also may have just been a character invented by Plato. However, you are trying to imply that if I believe socrates existed, and jesus didn't, when there is little evidence for both, then I would be being hypocritical, but you are mistaken. If I were to say to you that two people exist, one is called Dave and drives the number 7 bus, he likes House. The other is called Zaphod Beeblebrox and he likes to fly around the solar system in his invisible pink teapot. You have the same amount of evidence for both, but which one do you think really exists?
Mark wasn't a disciple, but is thought to have been present at Jesus' arrest. Peter was thought to have been his main source, and he was an eyewitness.
Peter was the eyewitness we agree, but Mark wrote the gospel in rome from Peter's testimony (and if Mark really were at the arrest, how old must he have been to have survived into the old age (at that time) to have written about it 40 years later?)
Most of the historical documents we rely on for pre-modern history are written in this way, as are the biographies of many people today. Rejecting sources because they're not eyewitnesses leaves you doubting a great deal of history.
It does, and a great deal of history
should be doubted. The difference again is the one illustrated by Dave and Zaphod above.
Modern scholarship tends to place Mark's gospel around 60AD, though others do admit 70AD. But this is still a time when people who knew him and may have been present at his crucifixion were alive. Luke is the same writer as Acts and he was present at many of the events in this book, which was written after the gospel. No serious modern scholarship places his gospel as late as 90AD, I'd be interested to know where you found that date.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B_kMPOCmPBQC Matthew was quite clearly writing for a Jewish audience and is very well acquainted with Jewish customs, again no modern scholarship that I know of believes him to have been a Gentile.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-ITl4t6XZkcC Though you are right, the majority place as a jewish convert rather than a gentile convert. However, none of these are Matthew the Evangelist whom (and we only have the word of Irenaeus) the book was traditionally ascribed to.
I think I may have been mistaken regarding John's identity, I don't have my notes here but I seem to remember he's generally dated to 90AD at the latest in modern scholarship, though I may be wrong on that one, which would be too late to be the disciple, you're right.
The plot thickens when we learn that John the Revelator was just a crazy greek on an island despite claiming to be John the Evangelist.
But the different gospel writers probably never saw each other's version of events, so plagarism from each other's works is highly unlikely.
There are whole sections of Marks gospel that have been copied and pasted into Matthew and Luke.
Remember the different versions were written for different audiences and collated later into one book.
Now this looks like a plausible explanation. But why collate them if they were for different people, and isn't the factual evidence independent of who reads it?
Christ is at the very centre of all Paul's teaching. Read Romans - he's there and plays a fundamental role.
Romans is all about Paul and his trouble in rome and how he's empowered by Jesus to keep going and so on(he may mention Jesus, but he doesn't actually talk
about him in detail). It is in Corinthians that Paul talks about important events in the historicity of Jesus like the last supper and the crucifixion, but no where near as much as he does about how christians should live.
Read Colossians and you can't escape Christ. Paul was writing in response to specific problems in specific churches, so he obviously deals with these issues, but Christ is referred to in every single one of his letters and plays a fundamental role in most of them.
There is now strong consensus that Colossians was not written by Paul but by someone wishing to continue the Pauline tradition, sometime in ca. 70-80 after Paul's death.
True, Paul wasn't an eyewitness of Christ (not counting the road to Damascus) but his accounts were written before the gospels and include information regarding belief about Jesus before the gospels were written, including what are thought to be early creeds and hymns from the first few years after Jesus' death. He is thus a very useful source which indicates that the beginnings of a church had formed within a decade of the crucifixion and resurrection, at a time when the events were fresh in people's minds.
I do not dispute this.
But alas, i remain a lazy atheist.