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is there a God?


zeusbheld
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Why don't people use more direct and more concise language so as to avoid any confusion as to what their message is? All these metaphors only help to create threads like this one.

there are some aspects of the human world and human experience that cannot be communicated in direct and concise language.

otherwise, stories would not exist.

yet clearly stories exist and they're important. otherwise for example homer's iliad and odyssey would not have been passed along verbally for generations before the first written edition of the stories.

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Moderator Note

This will be the last Moderator note on the issue of this thread being boring. After this, I'm just going to start deleting posts, and maybe more if certain posters refuse to listen.

This is the Religion and Philosophy forum. Anyone with a minimal amount of intelligence would realize that in this forum you are bound to find topics such as "Is there a God?"

If those kinds of topics bore you, go post in any one of the other 20 or so forums on this site.

Is that so hard to figure out? Or do you take pride in parading your lack of class, education and manners?

With more than 40 pages of responses so far, obviously there are plenty of people who find the topic interesting.

And if you have a real need to start insulting other people's nationalities, I guarantee you won't last long on this website - whether you've paid for a premium membership or not.

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Is there a God, What Booring Dribble. Seems to come from Americans more than most that others ive met.........Haaaaaaaalleeeeelujaaaaah

So whats interesting?

What is your favourite color?

How many 3rd world orphans died of starvation?

How large are some girl ****?

Who won the FA cup?

Telll met what is interesting and why and I will listen.

what about the orphans :cry: and girls **** huh huh more evidence of _____

the name that remains unseen :wink:

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ok folks i asked scutfargus 2 simple questions, bloody hell seems like years ago now, which required a simple yes or no answer. as is his wont he refused to answer them spouting a load of drivel from the bible to PROVE his point. so just to take the blinkers off a quick summary of what fundamental christians believe ...

nobody (and that means nobody) will go to heaven unless they are "born again". now u could be born a christian, raised as a christian and live ur life as christian, but unless u r born again u ain't going to heaven ... 3 guesses where u will be going. now "born again", as far as i can understand it, means u must accept jesus as ur saviour etc etc and make this decision to embrace him as the way to salvation etc etc WHEN u have reached maturity.if u don't uh uh, trouble ahead !!

so all u non-believers, jews, muslims, buddhists, hindus and "not proper christians" sorry u r all going to burn for etermity in hell !!(hope i haven't missed anyone of the list but if i have don't worry ... u r gonna burn baby burn).

now bearing in mind christians make up (in theory) approx 30%+ of the worlds population and the fundamentalists make up only a fraction of this it could be kind of lonely up there in heaven.in fact the catholic church is the biggest christian denomination, but they r not proper christains and they will burn in hell also. mind u if it's ppl like scutfargus up there how can u tell if u r in heaven or in hell.

now obviously anyone with a modicum of intelligence will realise this is complete and utter bollocks !! well u would think that wouldn't u, but nope that is genuinely what these fundamentilist nutters really do believe. see u all in hell ... maybe !!

hmmmmm ..... once again scutfargus ducks the real issues !!

ok scutfargus, going to make it really easy for you and all i need is a simple YES or NO. not 10 quotes from the bible which is PROOF of nothing.

do YOU really believe if we are not "born again" in jesus christ before we die we are all going to suffer for eternity in hell ??

now surely even YOU can give a straight answer to a straight question !!

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In some circles, there is the misunderstanding that there are hidden gospels and hidden books of the Bible which some large, nebulous organization left out of the Bible because it challenged the view this organization was hoping to get across. People think that these are secret, hidden books, that only recently are coming to light and that their contents might turn Christianity upside down?or at least, pose a grave theological threat to established religion. Many speak in reverent tones of the Gospel of St. Thomas, so it may do us some good to examine this short book.

1. First of all, it should be clear that there are books which are found in the Bible and books which are not found in the Bible. The Jewish Bible only has the books out of the Old Testament; the Christian Bible has the books from the Old and New Testaments; and the Catholic Bible has the Old and New Testaments and a set of books written in between those testaments known as the Apocrypha.

2. The question is, who decided which books got into the Bible in the first place? We will discuss the New Testament only.

3. During the first few centuries of Christianity, what was the inspired Word of God became an issue. There was a lot of writing which took place in the first few centuries, and it would only stand to reason that some would even write books where they pretend that they are like Scripture.

4. Certain criteria had to be set:

a. The book had to be written by an Apostle (this would be a person with authority over more than one church?there were at least the basic 12 Apostles and there are 3 or 4 whose authority is clear, but position is not).

b. In the alternative, a book had to have been written by someone closely associated with an Apostle. Luke was closely associated with Paul; Mark was associated closely with Peter.

c. The book had to be authoritative. That is, it had to, in some way, assert itself as authoritative.

d. A writer or a book could be recognized by another authoritative work as authoritative.

e. Not every book of the New Testament fits all of these criteria. For instance, the author of the book of Hebrews is unknown?this is one of the greatest letters in the New Testament, and we have, at best, theories as to who authored it.

f. The authorship of 2Peter is questioned, as the style is different from 1Peter.

5. It was important as to who in the early church recognized the book as authoritative. In the first 3 centuries, there was no organized church; there was no large body which oversaw the various local churches. We don?t have a large organized church until the Catholic Church in the 4th century. There were a number of early church leaders, Pseudo-Barnabas (circa 70?130); Clement of Rome (circa 95?97); Ignatius (circa 110); Polycarpa (circa 110?150); etc. There are at least 17 early church leaders whose opinion is considered, on down to Jerome (circa 340?420) and Augustine (circa 400). If they cite a book in their own writings as authoritative, this is noted; and if they specifically recognize a book as authoritative, this is noted.

6. We have canons of Scripture put together as early as 140 a.d. by Marion (there are 6 early canons altogether).

7. We have translations which are done: it was important to have the Bible translated into whatever language the people speak, so when translations of the New Testament began to be done: Titian Diatessaron (circa 170), the Old Latin (circa 200) and the Old Syriac (circa 400) this was noted as well.

8. Finally, there were councils which met, which were large representative bodies, with representatives from several churches from all over the civilized world. I should emphasize that these are not bodies which seized power in some way over a bunch of local churches, but heads of churches who met to discuss which books should be considered a part of the canon of Scripture.

a. We have the council of Nicea (circa 325?340), which left with 7 disputed books of the New Testament.

b. There councils of Hippo (393), Carthage (397) and Carthage (419) all agreed upon the books which make up the New Testament.

9. There is an outstanding chart on p. 193 of Geisler and Nix?s A General Introduction to the Bible which lists which books of the New Testament were seen by which groups and individuals as authoritative. By the year 300 a.d., agreement was almost universal; by 400 a.d., agreement was universal. Now, even though this also marks the time of the beginning of the church at Rome, there are churches completely independent of the Catholic Church which also agreed upon the canon of the New Testament.

10. The books of the New Testament as well as other books were separated into 3 groups:

a. The Homologoumena: these are the books that were accepted universally from the beginning without dispute. 20 of the 27 New Testament books are classified as belonging to the Homologoumena. This would be all of the books from Matthew through Philemon, and 1Peter and 1John.

b. Then we have the Antilegomena, which books did not receive immediate and universal recognition as being from God.

i. Hebrews was spoken against, as the author was unknown. Those in the east believed that Paul wrote it, so they accepted it. Those from the west questioned that conclusion, but eventually accepted it.

ii. James was questioned as to whether the authorship was genuine or not; and it was concerned that it was in conflict with the Pauline epistles.

iii. Revelation was question for longer than any other New Testament book.

c. The 3rd set of books are known as the Pseudopigrapha, and these were the books rejected by all. There were about 40 of these books which are well-known; but altogether, there are about 280 of them listed by Photius in the 9th century (and, no doubt, others have been discovered since then). Nobody hid them, they were not secret books, they were just simply rejected for a number of reasons:

i. They were faked. That is, the authorship was unlikely.

ii. They were written too late in the game. Many of these were written from the 2nd to the 5th century a.d., some still claiming to be written by this or that Apostle (like the letters of Paul to Seneca and his lost epistle to the Corinthians?the former is from the 4th century and the latter is from the 2nd or 3rd centuries).

iii. Nobody refers to these books as authoritative; no early church father makes this or that statement, and then backs it up with one of these books. No early church father quotes from any of these books.

(this pasted from WordPerfect better than I expected)

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11. This finally takes us to the gospel of Thomas. Of all of the books in the pseudopigrapha, this is probably the oldest, which is the only aspect of this book which gives it any credence. Many place the actual writing of this book to be in the 1st century a.d.

a. We have fragments of the Greek text from about 200 a.d.

b. Our oldest complete version dates back to 340, written in the Coptic. Although the Coptic version is not quite identical to any of the Greek fragments, it is believed that the Coptic version was translated from a prior Greek version.

c. It seems pretty obvious from our small number of manuscripts that few people had any reason to copy and recopy this book, unlike the books of the Bible.

12. Wikipedia gives several reasons why this book was never considered a part of the canon of Scripture:

a. It was deemed heretical

b. It was deemed inauthentic

c. It was unknown to those involved in recognizing the Canon of the New Testament

13. Who is Thomas?

a. His full name, Didymous Judas Thomas, means Judas the twin.

b. The Gnostics called Thomas the Twin Brother of Jesus. Since the Gnostic movement was started about 100 years or so after the death of Christ, the oral history had obviously been distorted by then on this particular detail. Some say that this simply means he is near and dear to Jesus; others, that he is a counterpart to Jesus.

c. He is sometimes called Thomas the Wanderer, an evangelist and founder of churches in the East. Various legends link him with Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Pakistan, China, Brazil, and Mexico.

d. Some call him Thomas the Knower, a gnostic teacher. This third view is probably the only one with a semblance of accuracy. Herbert Christian Merillat writes: There is a resemblance to notions of release and enlightenment found among Buddhists and other in the East, and among mystics more generally. Possibly the great appeal of his book is that it is short and, in many places, makes little or no sense, thus allowing it to be interpreted in a number of different ways.

14. Unlike the other gospels, which blend narrative with dialogue, this is just a bunch of quotes, mostly attributed to Jesus, all strung together. Many of the sayings are similar to what is found in the gospels; many are not; a significant portion makes little or no sense.

15. It might be instructive to actually read the Gospel of St. Thomas; it is short and easy to find several places on the internet. One quick read might explain why this book was never considered as canonical by any of the church fathers.

a. V. 4: Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.?

b. V. 7: Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

c. V. 11: Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

d. V. 60: He saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb and going to Judea. He said to his disciples, "that person ... around the lamb." They said to him, "So that he may kill it and eat it." He said to them, "He will not eat it while it is alive, but only after he has killed it and it has become a carcass." They said, "Otherwise he can't do it." He said to them, "So also with you, seek for yourselves a place for rest, or you might become a carcass and be eaten."

e. V. 98: Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one."

f. My favorite is the final verse of this gospel, which is v. 114: Simon Peter said to them, "Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven." There is some who think that this was added at a later date.

Bibliography

1. Norman Geisler and William Nix; A General Introduction to the Bible; Chicago; Moody Press, ©1968, p. 193?201.

2. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas.html

3. http://members.aol.com/didymus5/thomas.html

4. http://reluctant-messenger.com/gospel-of-thomas.htm

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

Most stuff, I write from the top of my head; this time, I used sources. :)

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The thing with all the quotes, proof and historical fact, is that each and every religious fundamentalist are able to present a similar argument pertaining to their religion.

Gnosticism, I know a guy who is into this, he asked me to check out the time of Constantine and the Nicene Creed document and stuff relating to the development of Christianity and the Council of Nicaea.

I have had a brief scan of this stuff, and the people who explain this sound very convincing in their views also.

Rather than defending or attempting to prove Gods existence, most religions are more interested in defending themselves and their history........such a deep belief appears to close the minds of the believer, in that their religion is right, the only way to be saved and go heaven (ok I am keeping things simple, I understand this differs)

So the ranting of a fundamentalist do little for me.

I watched an episode of Louis Therouxs Weird Weekends last night and he visited a Pastor who was thoroughly convinced that Aryan domination was required in order to save the world.

It takes all sorts....the path we take may differ, but the destination where we arrive is usually the same.

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I don't think the thread is boring, bjay.

Just that when Scutfargus makes abominably long posts consisting mainly of complex, arcane fundamentalist theological "scholarship", that just about nobody can penetrate (and like I said, I read most of it), all it does is turn off 99% of the people who find this subject interesting.

I guess you're the 1%. lol

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So it's not manipulation when a group of like-minded conservative Catholic fathers gather to sift through the hundreds of thousands of sayings attributed to Jesus, picking and choosing only those that fit their brand of Christianity, while burning the rest?

The Catholics did not hit the scene until the 4th century AD. We have a lot of manuscripts which predate the Catholic church. We can put the Greek Scriptures (the New Testament) right next to Jerome's Latin and see that there were no fundamental changes made.

Now, the Catholic Church eventually began to keep the Bible out of the hands of the common man. We have history of those wo were executed as heretics for attempting to get Scripture into the hands of the common man. After all, the Catholic Church was worried, if people get the Bible, they may stop supporting the Catholic Church.

Few people have any appreciation for what has been done to get copies of the original manuscripts. The Vatican had Codex Vaticanus, also known as Codex B, which is a Greek/Aramaic/Hebrew manuscript dating back to 325-350 AD. They actually obtained this copy in 1448, but kept it hidden from the outside world until 1815 (it did travel with the pope and the rest of his library when Napoleon exiled the Pope to Avignon). Anyway, it is 1815, it becomes known to the outside world that the Catholic Church has an ancient Greek manuscript. Sometime later, Tregelles applies to the Pope for permission to examine the manuscript. He is, of course, refused. He explained that he was a professor at the Leipzig University in New Testament Lit, so the Pope relented.

He got to see it once in 1843. Two years later, the pope let him see it again. However, there were rules. He was searched before he entered the room to read it; he could not take paper or a pen into that room. He was given 6 hours a day to study it, while being guarded. When he left, he was searched again, to make sure he did not take anything out of the room. So, what Tregelles did was, he memorized a portion of the text every day, and went home and wrote it down from memory. Then, he went back the next day, and spent six hours memorizing another portion of the text. In 3 months, he mentally smuggled out the contents of Codex B. After publishing the text, the Pope allowed the manuscript to be photographed (1859), as the cat was already out of the bag.

We have manuscripts (or portions of manuscripts) from every single century now, so that we can compare these together. You may not realize it, but for scholars who believe the Bible is the Word of God, any differences between manuscripts is a very big deal. Even so, 99.5% of the New Testament is in agreement. When there are 24,000 manuscripts, books and scraps of books, this is quite remarkable. When I have more energy, I will tell you all about Shakespear's works by comparison.

Also, the portions which are differ rarely differ in any essential point of doctrine. About the only exception that I can think of is the end of the book of Mark where it talks about the Apostles holding up snakes and drinking poison. Once we were able to find some manuscripts older than Textus Redeptus (the Greek NT manuscript used by the KJV translators), we found that passage was not in the older manuscripts.

At this point in time, anyone who wants can have several different versions of the Greek NT--they are free, on the internet. They are all over. Now, by a different version, I mean, the originals were produced at different times in history; but the actual text of these various versions is 99.5% the same. I have 3 or 4 different Greek versions on my computer, and one of them lists most or all of the variants. Many English Bibles list most of the variants (the NKJV and the NASB are the best in this regard). I have several different versions in written form as well; so I can essentially go back to the original manuscripts myself and determine which is the best reading when it comes to those very few places where there are differences.

Now, with regards to the Old Testament, that is a completely different story.

Also, Bjay, I think I was pretty snippy the last time I addressed you, so I apologize for that. That was unwarranted.

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all i need is a simple YES or NO. not 10 quotes from the bible which is PROOF of nothing.

do YOU really believe if we are not "born again" in jesus christ before we die we are all going to suffer for eternity in hell ??

now surely even YOU can give a straight answer to a straight question !!

I thought that I had answered this a dozen times. I am going to go with Jesus on this one, who said, on many occasions, that if you believe Him, then you have eternal life; but if you don't believe in Him, the wrath of God will be put on you. I quoted volumes of Scripture to show you that this was not something which I concocted out of thin air.

Any person here who reads this, regardless of your religious affiliation, regardless of what you plan to do tomorrow, can right at this moment believe in Jesus Christ. You are only responsible for you; you are the only person who can choose to believe or not to believe. It is not like you are being asked to join a church; it is not like you are being asked to change your evil ways; no one is asking you to be baptized or to come forward in a church service. Jesus made it free to us--believe in Him--that's it, nothing else.

Now, if spending a few seconds believing in Jesus is too much to ask, and you would rather roll the dice and find out after you die that you will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire, that is your choice.

It's just like Donald Trump handing you a check for $10 million, and you say, "Naw, that's just too much trouble to hold open my hand to receive that check; I think I'll just pass. Maybe later I might think about it."

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The thing with all the quotes, proof and historical fact, is that each and every religious fundamentalist are able to present a similar argument pertaining to their religion.

Gnosticism, I know a guy who is into this, he asked me to check out the time of Constantine and the Nicene Creed document and stuff relating to the development of Christianity and the Council of Nicaea.

I have had a brief scan of this stuff, and the people who explain this sound very convincing in their views also.

This is a good and valid point. This is why I quoted a boat load of Scripture conerning the most fundamental truth--Jesus Christ. When it comes to the most fundamental precepts, the Bible is very clear. You might be able to list a verse or two which seems to say this or that; but the most important doctrines are everywhere in the Bible. This is why there are references to Jesus dying for our sins as far back as the 3rd chapter of Genesis, in the Passover, in Abraham offering up his only son of promise, in the psalms, in Isaiah, in the gospels, in the epistles and even in Revelation.

And when I quoted that boat load of Scripture, if memory serves, I only took it from the gospels. I could have tripled the amount of Scripture I quoted if I went to other places in the Bible, saying again and again, believe in Jesus Christ and you are saved.

Rather than defending or attempting to prove Gods existence, most religions are more interested in defending themselves and their history........such a deep belief appears to close the minds of the believer, in that their religion is right, the only way to be saved and go heaven (ok I am keeping things simple, I understand this differs)

I agree completely. Before I was saved, I studied all kinds of different literature and cults. The Jehovah Witnesses said they were the only ones; the Armstrong cult claimed that as well; of course the Catholic church made that claim. So, just like you are apparently doing, I looked at a number of different options. Not the same ones, exactly; but I studied a number of different viewpoints. Finally, and I cannot explain exactly why, I went to the Bible and the book of John, and, after seeing Jesus admonish anyone He spoke to, to believe in Him, I took the plunge and believed.

So the ranting of a fundamentalist do little for me.

There is a lot of fundamentaliist ranting which does very little for me as well. I could not name a single tv preacher that I can watch for more than 30 seconds, apart from Billy Graham.

It takes all sorts....the path we take may differ, but the destination where we arrive is usually the same.

Always bear in mind, that Jesus speaks of hell more than any other person in the Bible or anywhere else. Jesus is almost universally admired, but people forget how often He spoke of hell (even in the Sermon on the Mount, which is one of the few sermons anyone actually knows); and always remember, He was hated for the words he said--this was the human motivation which took Him to the cross.

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