Forums / Miscellaneous Discussions / Did Jesus Exist ?

*edit: I tried twice to make my quotations italisized and my own thoughts normal but when I post it makes it all italics. Sorry there is one part in there that is especially confusing now where i am quoting two guys one after the other =/

It is funny how you blame religion for all those wars and deaths and the like, it is not the religion that caused those w*beep*M>

I really like that you completely disregarded by links to the subject YOU asked about saying they weren't good but bringing no evidance as to why they weren't good and than changing the subject.

I'll just consider that an that you admitted to losing that argument and move on.

As for your ethics question, you once again prove the arrogance of christians that think morality and ethics come from religion, which is again completely false. As for your questions...

A: no
B: no
C: no
D: Maybe, not always.
E: Exactly

Alright Clamps. Let's take a look at the definition of 'evolution':

Main Entry:

evo·lu·tion

Pronunciation:

\ˌe-və-ˈlü-shən, ˌē-və-\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Latin evolution-, evolutio unrolling, from evolvere

Date:

1622

1: one of a set of prescribed movements
2 a: a process of change in a certain direction : unfolding b: the action or an instance of forming and giving something off : emission c (1): a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state : growth (2): a process of gradual and relatively peaceful social, political, and economic advance d: something evolved
3: the process of working out or developing
4 a: the historical development of a biological group (as a race or species) : phylogeny b: a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations; also : the process described by this theory
5: the extraction of a mathematical root
6: a process in which the whole universe is a progression of interrelated phenomena

— evo·lu·tion·ari·ly \-shə-ˌner-ə-lē\ adverb

— evo·lu·tion·ary \-shə-ˌner-ē\ adjective

— evo·lu·tion·ism \-shə-ˌni-zəm\ noun

— evo·lu·tion·ist \-sh(ə-)nist\ noun or adjective

Okay, with this established, let's go over a few things.

1. Going off definitions 1 and 2a, we're seeing that evolution has a certain stage of arranged 'prescribed' movements that are heading in a 'direction'. What, or who, dictates the direction that is taken? Section c also talks about how things are evolving from a 'worse' state into something that is better? Now, I won't deny things such as selective breeding, however let's take a look at the world around us. Humans have created tools to adapt to our environment, however why haven't we 'evolved' these tools naturally? I want to use a knife, fork and spoon to eat, why haven't I evolved a knife and a spork on a couple of my fingers?

2. Ah, so we go back to the theory of evolution that we evolved through

I really like that you completely disregarded by links to the subject YOU asked about saying they weren't good but bringing no evidance as to why they weren't good and than changing the subject.

I'll just consider that an that you admitted to losing that argument and move on.

As for your ethics question, you once again prove the arrogance of christians that think morality and ethics come from religion, which is again completely false. As for your questions...

A: no
B: no
C: no
D: Maybe, not always.
E: Exactly

Oi. Cobra. You accuse me for not bringing evidence to cite your side as wrong wrong. (To which I would have to invest some time in, and can do it later on.) Yet, then you go and do it for the ethical morality question, as well as accuse me of something that I haven't stated. Double standard, perhaps?

Still, getting back to my questions. Clamps did a better job answering them, to which I thank him, and cited a good point. Every society has had a system of moral laws to follow. You can trace them back to as early as the time of the Ancient Mesopotamians and the Ancient Egyptians due to their written form. Without these laws, human society would be quite chaotic? Random acts of violence, stealing etc.

Now, before the written code of laws, we can only assume that humans still didn't like things like murder or stealing. So, I'm going to ask Clamps this and Cobra, if you can provide a halfway decent answer instead of a blatant attack, I'll answer it as well.

Ignoring, for the moment, the relativity of right and wrong. What makes you determine the difference between the two, and what kept primitive man from doing all these random acts of violence and such before an established written code of laws?

LOL ok if you are going to quote a dictionary learn how to use one. The little numbers in front tell you when they are giving several SENSES of a word. The only sense anybody in this thread is using it as is #4 so I'm not bothering with that other nonsense you said. Lol... ffs....bbq

EVERYTHING that has happened, is happening and will ever happen will happen within the laws of physics. Things can be random within those laws, such as throwing a dice. There is no contradiction. You have mistaken the definition of "random" or "law" but I can't tell which.

Also, if there are laws, such as physics, gravity, Newton's Laws, etc. Then there must be a law giver

No, there doesn't. Why would you say that? (Here I'm inviting some reasoning if you have any to offer on this claim). I for one do not need the idea of a law-giver to fathom the idea of a law.

You didn't see Henry Ford lob some dynamite in a building, blow it up and then come out with the first Model T, did you?

Ok I understand where why that is difficult to conceive at first. Think of two things though: the amount of time given and the physical laws governing space. In an amount of time measured in the millions of billions of years, many seemingly unlikely things can happen. It is unlikely that I will sink a basketball from full-court while blindfolded, but given a million-billion tries at it I will make the shot hundreds... of thousands.... of billions... of times. Because of this, evolution from chemical particles to complex life is not only possible but INEVITABLE.

Then why is it so hard to believe in a designer for a universe, something far more complex that contains order...

It is incredibly easy to conceive of this, but impossible to believe in this (for me) because there is nothing that has happened, is happening, or will likely ever happen that won't be understandable with physics. God is not needed to explain anything in all of existence.

"Then why is it so hard to believe in a designer for a universe, something far more complex that contains order..."

The reason it's hard is because any designer powerful enough to create everything with the complexity that exists, because the question follows, who created the designer? Something that has the power to create complexity must be an a highly more complex concept.

The only Theory we have that explains the current state without using a infinitely more complex concept is Evolution through natural selection.

Now, before the written code of laws, we can only assume that humans still didn't like things like murder or stealing

Right.... it isn't that people dislike it when the law is broken, it is that people don't like it when people steal their stuff LOL. People don't like when you kill their friends or adulter with their wives because you are infringing on their territory, kinda like "stealing their personal space". Man people didn't like that stuff before it was written as law, Hammurabi was a big deal because he was the first to write it down so it would be set and not arbitrary what happens when you do someting people don't like done.

What makes you determine the difference between the two, and what kept primitive man from doing all these random acts of violence and such before an established written code of laws?

I determined what is right or wrong based on if it upsets me that someone infringed on me in some way OR when I can feel sympathy for another person being infringed on (vicimized) by another (a criminal of whatever kind). People decide what is right or wrong based on if they would like it done to them.

Primitive man may have been able to sympathize enough for one another that they anticipated how an action would make another feel and thus didn't do it. Aninals do't do this because they can't anticipate our feelings and if they did their brains would have to be formed for them to care in order for that to matter. More importantly though, we don't really have any evidence to say that primitive man didn't just go around humping everything that moves and taking whatever they want from whoever they want =p

So many posts, so little time. :-D

A couple of more questions for you all while I try to get some shut eye and can actually work on this relatively rested. One will address Clamps' most recent post.

1. Do you all believe in infinite? (a number capable of going on forever, like Pi for instance.) If so, can time (also being the fourth dimension) have its own infinite? (aka. Eternity)

2. Do you all believe in a conscience or a moral compass? If so, from where did it come from? (If you use parents or outside human influence, you'll have to give me an example of where theirs came from as well.)

Now, I'm also going to answer the section that Clamps wanted me to reason on a bit. Let me use this question, answer it and I'll follow up on it later: The laws of any nation, who creates them?

Theoretically I understand infinite but I'm not sure how many times it actually occurs in existence. More importantly I can never show that a thing is infinite, only that I can show it is beyond my maximum ability to measure it.

Do you all believe in a conscience or a moral compass

Things that make me mad are wrong in my books. Things that I expect would make others mad is wrong. If a thing would make one person mad if it happened and another mad if it didn't then I have an example of how these things are relative.

"
1. Do you all believe in infinite? (a number capable of going on forever, like Pi for instance.) If so, can time (also being the fourth dimension) have its own infinite? (aka. Eternity)"

Pi is not really infinite, it just doesn't have a repetitive decimal structure, it being an irrational number. Infinite in a mathematical and theorical sense is quite easy to believe, but even there we don't use real 'infinite' we use "it tends" to the infinite, which isn't the same thing. As for infinity of time I think the best answer was given by Eisntein... "Only two things are infinite space and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former." That said no I don't believe time is infinite.

"2. Do you all believe in a conscience or a moral compass? If so, from where did it come from? (If you use parents or outside human influence, you'll have to give me an example of where theirs came from as well.)"

For us we get our conscience from society, but for the answer as to where society got it from please read my previous post about primitive man.

Now I'm behind on the argument...

With the protein solution,

There are two types of amino acids (or more, but only two main relevant types to the situation here.) I will refer to them as "A" and "B".

To get a protein, you need the correct formula of A and B Amino acids.
There has been some oft cited research in the lab showing that you can get Amino acids from chemicals, but this was in the lab, and they only managed to get A Amino acids.
Therefore, how, in the first place, did the single-celled organism's come to being lacking ideal facilities and equipment?

Also, on Hitler and the Holocaust. (I found this in Wikipedia for the sake of time, but I originally read about it somewhere else. I can't remember where, unfortunately. It was a few years ago.)

"One of the foundations of Hitler's and the NSDAP's social policies was the concept of racial hygiene. It was based on the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau, eugenics, and social Darwinism. Applied to human beings, "survival of the fittest" was interpreted as requiring racial purity and killing off "life unworthy of life." The first victims were crippled and retarded children in a program dubbed Action T4.^[46] After a public outcry, Hitler made a show of ending this program, but the killings in fact continued.

Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed somewhere between 11 and 14 million people, including about 6 million Jews,^[47] in concentration camps, ghettos and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere. Besides being gassed to death, many also died as a result of starvation and disease while working as slave labourers (sometimes benefiting private German companies in the process, because of the low cost of such labour). Along with Jews, non-Jewish Poles (over 3 million casualties), alleged communists or political opposition, members of resistance groups, Catholic and Protestant opponents, homosexuals, Roma, the physically handicapped and mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war (possibly as many as 3 million), Jehovah's Witnesses, anti-Nazi clergy, trade unionists, and psychiatric patients were killed. One of the biggest centres of mass-killing was the extermination camp complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hitler never visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the killing in precise terms.

The massacres that led to the coining of the word "genocide" (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question") were planned and ordered by leading Nazis, with Himmler playing a key role. While no specific order from Hitler authorizing the mass killing of the Jews has surfaced, there is documentation showing that he approved the Einsatzgruppen, killing squads that followed the German army through Poland and Russia, and that he was kept well informed about their activities. The evidence also suggests that in the fall of 1941 Himmler and Hitler decided upon mass extermination by gassing. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over fifty years later, Hitler's valet Heinz Linge and his military aide Otto Gunsche said Hitler had "pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers."

To make for smoother cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution", the Wannsee conference was held near Berlin on 20 January 1942, with fifteen senior officials participating, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The records of this meeting provide the clearest evidence of planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews"."

Man, thanks so much for saying this in few words. Problem is they will pretend not to understand that point in order to make you explain the whole damn thing....argh....

Darwin said at the end of his life that the evolutiontheory was wrong :D....thought that are only his words, why would you believe those :D

and yh religion is mostly used to start a war, but that doesnt mean, that the religion says you have to start a war.

Science is built up by a large bulk of experimental evidence and theories which fit experimental and natural observations. It is not based on what people think is going on and what one person says. And I just noticed that it is sort of the opposite for religion.... :P

Then religion is built up by experimental evidence and not just what people say? LMAO.

How can you say that the living representative of Christ on earth mis-construed religion?! Why, that is blasphemy! Burn the blasphemer!! Die!!

good statement although: "God Is what ever your paerent tell you should believe in"

i dont agree with as theres plenty of converts and suchlike to prove otherwise

This is to address Fellatio from a while back regarding the purpose of religion.

Even if there is no proof of God, Jesus, Holy Trinity, Buddah, Muhammad, etc., religion isn't entirely "useless." 

1) For a long time religion was used as a form of law not that unlike what most civilized nations have today.  God as a judge of sinners acted kind of like a judge in a modern-day court. Just like religion, there is no such proven, real thing as "justice" but both are rather a manmade concept used to teach right and wrong.

2) Religion is often a way people develop a community.  There are numerous social gathering at any kind of church where parents meet other parents, kids meet friends, etc.  And of course, there is also a feeling of one-ness with God which can help those in mental distress, the feeling of always having a guiding friend (not entirely unlike having a psychologist.)

3) Many churches begin charity drives, missionary work (like building houses, not just waving bibles in African kids' faces), or other "social responsibility" programs.  It's hard to say giving food to starving kids is a bad thing :P

Yes, all three of these can be done without any religious influence at all, but does that make religion entirely worthless?  No, religion is just a part of society that can do both good and bad.  Whether the good overweighs the bad or vice versa is an entire debate in itself, which will have to do more with opinion that anything else.

did he excist?

Aye

did he die on the cross?

Aye

was he the son of god?

i strongly doubt it

was he divine?

i strongly doubt it

did he die to save us?

haha what a joke.

was he an manipulative leader?

no doubt.

"Yes, in my opinion."

Well there is no one thing that everyone likes.  There are many varieties of the same thing... we don't all drive the same cars or live in the same kind of house or eat the same food.  Each variety offers something a bit different.  Religion is hardly any different.  You might as well say oranges are worthless because we already have apples :)

Many of the hobbies that you mentioned are fine, but few encourage people to reach out for the community as many religions try to do.  If you are starving, which would you prefer, a soccer sport team or a church with a food for the homeless program?

"Anyway my point is that church has its good points and its bad points, but on a larger scale, sports, bingo, dancing and school are far less harmful than religion."

Yeah, but I'd say those have far less good points than religion, save perhaps school.  It all comes down to opinion.

you people still write in this thread !!

the major religions all seem to center about one theme:  love, which is or less what society tries to instill in us already.

I get what you're saying and it's fair enought really, but as I said I dream of a world where people aren't misled by religion because I'm confident that the truly good people would still help others. Think of the many enviromental groups who try to get things done, not to get to heaven, but just to improve the earth for people.

why not channel that selfishness into something constructive and beneficial to the community

I also get this and it also is kindof reasonable, but I'd prefer if nobody was tricked into doing something they wouldn't do. I say use reason to show people why they should do good, not give them promises of angels and heaven and loving men in the sky. Even if I don't like a person who will do no good without reward, I don't think he should be tricked, and I'm happier with him doing nothing at all.

Although I don't agree with Does one starving kid in Africa really make a difference to the world? I still don't think we should be messing around in other peoples' countries. We're not helping their economy by sending food... Also, helping people in another country is just organised to appeal to people who can't be bothered to take care of the poor and starving in their own country. Only countries with no poverty should send aid.

Unfortunately, many people do not think with reason, or are simply too selfish to let reason change their minds.  And even the most logical person sometimes loses focus of the bigger picture.

What can I say? I agree totally and that's what this thread is all about.

First of all I believe that picture is offensive to Believers

Second of all there is a slight part that reminded me from that picture, if jesus was from Nazra and Bethlehem and all that, how is he white? Surely he would be black? As would mary and joseph

Parents do pay a vital part in your religous beliefs in My opinion, of course some will change , some will be born into no religion at all, The point is that people will believe even if you actually tell them and prove he does not excist , that is a point we are missing people, if they want to let them follow a leader , a faith, It is their decision in the end of the day even if they are christand [ Me ] that does not meen they have to attend church every sunday, the world is what it is, let it be, no matter what , there will always be conflict , if we erased religion then what? A new reason to fight, this will continue even if we go to war with aliens, there will still be conflict on Earth, I dont like the wars , innocent people dying does not float my boat , its their decision what path they follow in the end, yes people will try and may steer them in one direction [ possible parents ] but in the end its their decision

Thankyou

Oh yeah! Mary and Joseph were humans and Jesus was God! And since God is clearly white then so is Jesus! Makes so much sense now...